Renol The bioplastic from the forest
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Ren Com AB |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 5 000 000 |
| Project duration | August 2018 - December 2020 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | The strategic innovation programme Bioinnovation |
Purpose and goal
Our innovation gives the tools to the forest industry to increase the material yield from wood to products by offering a sustainable and competitive area of use for the by-product, lignin. Our product is a bioplastic made from functionalized lignin that the plastics industry can use in existing processes. In this way, we gradually reduce the amount of fossil plastics in final products. Thus, we help the forest industry and the plastics industry to create new value chains and we contribute to a more circular economy with sustainable and functional materials to replace fossil plastics.
Expected results and effects
Since this project was started in 2018, there has been a drastic change in the forest industry and the plastics industry, driven by the market increasing demands from consumers and legislators to reduce our dependence on fossil oils. Our product has been tested by more than 30 different plastic manufacturers with over 90% customer satisfaction. As a result of the above, RenCom has received SEK 14 million from the Swedish Energy Agency as support for scaling up its technology on a demonstration scale and for delivering materials in large quantities for full-scale evaluation in TRL 8/9.
Planned approach and implementation
RenCom as a company has employed 8 people since the start in 2018 to meet the project´s goals, in order to be able to carry out this work to establish a new product on the market. At the start of the project, a lot of time was spent on optimizing recipes and evaluating different types of lignin; "hardwood and softwood" and various lignin suppliers. At the end of the project, we focused on optimizing our material against the end customer´s needs, which resulted in more than 5 technical data sheets on functional mixtures of our material with other bioplastics and ordinary plastics.