CLERMONT-FERRAND – Carbios, headquartered in, France, has doubled its number of issued patents since 2021.
The French company and its subsidiary Carbiolice currently hold 336 titles worldwide divided into 53 patent families. In 2022, several titles protecting the company’s proprietary PET-degrading enzymes were granted in the USA, as well as in Indonesia, South Korea, China, Japan and India. Carbios has also obtained grants within its patent families protecting the biodegradable plastics production process, notably the masterbatch containing the enzyme or its production process.
“Over the past two years, we have mainly focused on strengthening the protection of our PET biorecycling process and its proprietary enzymes,” said Lise Lucchesi, director of intellectual property at Carbios. “In the coming years, we will continue to consolidate the protection of this process, and that of our PLA biodegradation process, by filing new patent applications. We will also actively follow up on our filed patent applications in order to obtain granted patents.”
“Biological recycling is the most efficient and circular solution for degrading plastics,” added CEO Emmanuel Ladent. “The protection of our enzymes and processes is at the heart of our work, and we have a dedicated intellectual property team. From 2023, we will also focus our efforts on protecting innovation related to the enzymatic degradation of other polymers.”
The company’s process deconstructs any type of PET – the dominant polymer in bottles, trays and textiles – into its basic components, which can then be reused to produce new PET plastics with equivalent quality to virgin. This innovation was recently recognised in a scientific paper published in Nature. Carbios successfully started up its demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand in 2021 and has now taken another key step towards the industrialisation of its process with the construction of a first-of-a-kind unit in partnership with Indorama Ventures.
In 2022, Carbios signed an agreement with On, Patagonia, Puma and Salomon to develop solutions promoting the recyclability and circularity of their products and PVH Corporation joined this consortium in January this year.
The company has also developed an enzymatic biodegradation technology for PLA-based single-use plastics. This technology can create a new generation of plastics that are 100% compostable at ambient temperatures, even in domestic conditions, integrating enzymes at the heart of the plastic product.