August 2010
Elevance in the News: Polymers & Tyre Asia
Elevance is featured in the August/September issue of Polymers & Tyre Asia, an international trade publication covering the rubber, plastics and specialty polymers industry. The article, “Chemistry of Green” cites Elevance as a “leader in green chemistry” noting its increasingly “wide relevance as the world switches to green and sustainable technologies.”
The article points out Elevance’s distinction as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 10 Most Successful Startups of 2008, and that, just two years later, it expanded and created the world’s largest biorefinery.
Through its Wilmar joint venture, Elevance is able to rapidly, cost-effectively and profitably produce 180,000 metric tones per year of ‘drop in fuels,’ specialty chemicals and oleochemicals.
By collaborating with leading industry partners, Elevance is commercializing renewable chemicals for use in consumer ingredients and intermediates, antimicrobials, lubricants, fuels and additives for lubricants and fuels.
For the complete article: Polymers and Tyre Asia, Aug.-Sept. 2010.
Elevance in the News: Crain’s Chicago Business
Crain’s Chicago Business featured Elevance in the August 2 issue, highlighting the company’s growth and innovation in the specialty chemicals industry.
Writer John Pletz noted, “While others struggle to turn a profit squeezing fuel out of corn, K’Lynne Johnson is turning crops into chemicals.”
The article declared that Elevance “may have hit on a formula that’s sustainable not just environmentally but also financially. Making agricultural feedstocks into chemicals costs about as much as producing ethanol, but the chemicals sell for twice as much. That makes the business profitable without the taxpayer subsidies that prop up the ethanol industry.”
Seth Snyder, a biofuels researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in Darien said that Elevance is “extremely vital to the area.” For an area that is familiar with the agriculture and petrochemicals industries, Pletz writes “renewable chemicals offer not only the prospect of new jobs for local workers but also a new market for Illinois farmers.”
As Elevance strives to be a leader in the space, Johnson acknowledges that customers are “skeptical that there are very many technologies that can deliver cost and performance, and they’re right. There have not been very many technologies that have been able to deliver. We believe we can.”
Read the full article, available for viewing by subscription or free-trial.
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