Every year, millions of tons of sustainable, non-food cellulose are underutilised or wasted. This includes waste cellulose from forestry, paper mills, crops and food processing. Circa’s founders saw this as an opportunity and developed bio-based, high-performance alternatives to toxic fossil-based chemicals from the most abundant polymer in the world.
Founded in 2006, Circa is a renewable chemicals company with the scalable technology to produce unique and highly valuable bio-based chemicals. Our Furacell™ production process takes forest waste biomass and produces our platform chemical, levoglucosenone (LGO), along with char and water. The proprietary technology was developed in 2009 and fine-tuned over ten years across five pilot plants. Since then, over 1,000 trial amounts have been distributed for research by universities and industry.
An industrial plant ReSolute is currently under construction and will be commissioned in 2023 producing 1,000 tonnes of Cyrene™ per annum, a bio-based solvent which is made in one step from LGO. ReSolute is the first in a series of plants on a roadmap that will see Circa build 80,000 tonnes of capacity by 2030.
Today, Circa works with global businesses who are committed to transitioning from fossil-based chemicals, including the solvents used in their industrial processes. The market for these solvents is mostly served by unsustainable and toxic fossil-based solvents. Governments and industries worldwide are seeking substitutes to these chemicals which are harmful to human health and the environment. Cyrene™ is widely acknowledged as one of the very few viable, low-toxicity and sustainable alternatives, with probably the broadest use profile.
Circa Group AS is incorporated in Norway with its head office in Oslo and listed on Euronext Growth with the code CIRCA.
Role in the project
Circa will use novel and established chemistry to convert our levoglucosenone (LGO) platform molecule into an array of scaffolds / building blocks for active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production. These bio-based compounds will then be used to develop succinct routes to known pharmaceuticals that are not only scalable and sustainable, but also provide distinct market advantages. Circa will also support the use and recycling of bio-based solvent Cyrene™ in both traditional synthetic methods as well as flow processes.
