will buy, indirectly, increasing amounts
of epichlorohydrin, an epoxy resins
intermediate normally made from petrochemicals. It is produced by Solvay
under the brand name Epicerol from
glycerine derived from the production
of biodiesel.
Under another deal earlier this
year, AkzoNobel pledged to buy
renewable coatings solvents from
Solvay. But the latest agreement is
unusual because AkzoNobel will be
buying Epicerol via its purchases of
epoxy resins from Solvay’s epichlorohydrin customers, mainly for use in its
marine coatings.
The book-and-claim system underpinning the scheme will involve the
third-party auditing of the transactions between Solvay and its customers
and then between the resin producers
and AkzoNobel in order to monitor the amounts of Epicerol passing
down the supply chain between the
two companies.
“To the best of our knowledge, such
a multi-stage, book-and-claim, value
chain approach is a first in the chemi-
cals and coatings industry,” said Peter
Nieuwenhuizen, AkzoNobel’s director
of future-proof supply chains. “Where it
makes sense, we will make further deals
like this for our businesses.”
“We expect to source 20 percent of
our total epichlorohydrin demand as a
biobased material by 2016, (which is)
an expectation based on market and de-
mand conditions continuing as currently
anticipated,” he continued. “The agree-
ment doesn’t impact on pricing, which re-
mains between Solvay and its customers
and AkzoNobel and its suppliers.”
For AkzoNobel the agreement fits in
well with its strategy for biobased chemi-
cals in which it is focusing on develop-
ing supply channels and applications for
them rather than on the in-house devel-
opment of them.
“We aim to work across the supply chain to integrate biobased raw
materials,” explained Nieuwenhuizen,
whose company sees itself as being a
pioneer in the encouraging of the use
of biobased products among suppliers
and customers.
July 2013
Europe
Currently approximately nine percent of its expenditure on raw materials in both its coatings and speciality
chemicals sectors is on biobased chemicals. But it wants to considerably increase that figure by taking advantage
of the move from first-generation bio
feedstocks based mainly on food crops
to the second generation derived mostly
from cellulosic waste.
“We plan to take first generation opportunities as a stepping stone but insist
suppliers work towards the second generation,” he said.
The company is also conscious that, at
a time of threats of raw materials shortages, renewables can be an alternative
source of supplies.
“(The deal with Solvay) leads to
greater collaboration in the supply
chain,” said Nieuwenhuizen. “In general
we aim to work on biobased solutions
that also address a supply bottleneck in
the chain.”
As a result of the agreement, Solvay
is increasing production capacity of
Epicerol in an epichlorohydrin plant
in China after already raising capac-
ity in a plant in Thailand and another
in France.
“Our goal is to develop a preference
for Epicerol and thereby contribute to
a more sustainable world,” said Jean-
Luc Preat, head of Solvay’s Epicerol
business. “By developing a biobased
supply route next to the traditional
petrochemical route we are (also)
helping to reinforce the security of
supplies to the industry.”
However, Solvay revealed that the
two companies have still to finalize
the procedure for verifying the quanti-
ties of Epicerol indirectly purchased by
AkzoNobel. “This verification will likely
involve an independent consultant to en-
sure confidentiality between the various
supply chain partners and compliance
with competition laws.”
DSM, a Dutch-based supplier of
coatings resins and other materials as
well as life sciences products, which
is backward integrating into biobased
feedstocks made through biotechnol-
ogy processes, uses carbon dioxide
emission levels as the major criteria for
www.coatingsworld.com
gauging the sustainability of biobased
materials. It conducts numerous car-bon-footprint measurements on its and
suppliers’ products.
The company recently launched a
new range of biobased waterborne alkyd coating resins with an “extremely
low carbon footprint” so that coatings
producers could differentiate their
decorative paints from standard water-borne ones.
“Currently, there is no generally rec-
ognized system for certification of bio-
based coatings,” said a DSM official.
“Measuring the carbon 14/12 isotope
ratio is the current method to determine
what percentage of the coating is bio-
based carbon. This is how we at DSM
test the biobased content and the results
of these measurements are the same as
the theoretical values.”
BASF, which is a leading supplier of
coatings raw materials while also being
a major coatings producer, has recently
adopted a uniform system for measuring
both the renewables and fossil-derived
content of products. This is done by con-
verting both to their methane equivalents.
“The amount of renewable feedstock
used is then allocated to dedicated products based on their individual formulation,” Martin Brudermueller, BASF
vice-chairman, told a conference at
Ludwigshafen, Germany, in June on the
company’s performance materials, including coatings materials and additives.
“The approach is about crediting the
use of renewable feedstock to specific
products rather than an analysis of the
measureable biobased content in these
products,” he continued.
This “mass balance” methodology,
which has been developed jointly by
BASF and Tued-Sued, a Munich-based
verification and technical services organization, applies only when the renewable
and fossil materials are chemically identical. It is consistent with BASF’s policy
that the use of biomass must not impair
product quality.
It is a simplified approach to certification which could be a challenge to
some of BASF’s competitors who are
concentrating on creating more complex systems. CW
