The North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) is taking the lead on a 30 month group project to identify commercial opportunities for alternative chemicals made from sustainable resources.

The intended project outcome of this collaboration will be to produce a set of estimated capital and operating costs for the best and most technically feasible processing options.

The group is made up of leading industrial companies in the UK, plus research academics from Surrey, Teesside and Newcastle Universities.

Assessing Biomass to Chemicals (ABC) is partly sponsored by DEFRA and a range of industrial parties such as Scott Bader, AkzoNobel, Growhow, Jacobs Engineering, Graphite Resources and Link2Energy.

Scott Bader has been working on green projects for over two years, intending to develop a series of alternative composite resins from renewable resources. They see the opportunity to work with NEPIC as an ideal method of collaborating with other companies and academics that share the joint commitment to discovering sustainable, environmentally friendly alternatives for chemical products.

Mr Roy Phillips, Technical Director for Scott Bader commented: “Over the next 30 months the R & D team will work closely with members of the Group to share ideas and expertise. This is a significant commitment of our R & D resources, which Scott Bader believes it must do in order to find viable renewable options within the chemical industry for the future.”