GranBio with Birla Carbon awarded $730,000 in grants for scale-up of nanocellulose dispersion composite masterbatch
Atlanta, G1 – AVAPCO, a subsidiary of GranBio Technologies, announces that it has been awarded $500,000 in funding from P3Nano, a public private partnership between the U.S. Endowment for Forestry & Communities and the USDA Forest Service (USFS), along with an additional $230,000 from the USFS under a separate program to advance scale-up and commercial introduction of the Nanocellulose Dispersion Composite (NDC™) rubber masterbatch for the tire and rubber goods markets.
The breakthrough NDC masterbatch is the result of a four-year Joint Development Program between Birla Carbon and GranBio, designed to address growing sustainability demands from the tire industry in terms of improving both tire rolling resistance and vehicle fuel economy through enabling the incorporation of sustainable, bio-derived nanocellulose into commercial rubber compounds.
P3Nano’s funding program targets projects designed to advance the commercialization of cellulosic nanomaterials. Under the competitive Award, the companies will demonstrate continuous scale-up of production of the NDC at GranBio’s Biorefinery in Thomaston, Georgia for anticipated full-scale factory and on-road tire trials by global partners within the tire and mechanical rubber goods industries.
Under the additional competitive award from the USFS’s Wood Innovations program, designed to expand and accelerate market growth for wood products, the companies will prepare an engineering package, market analysis, and financial modeling for the first NDC commercial plant.
“The NDC project demonstrates how Birla Carbon continues to drive innovation in sustainability supporting our ambitions and those of our customers,” said John Loudermilk, Chief Executive Officer, Birla Carbon. “The partnership with GranBio allows us to ‘Share the Strength’ in support of our aspiration to achieve net zero carbon emissions, including the development of novel materials from biomass.”
According to Bernardo Gradin, Chief Executive Officer of GranBio Technologies, “The NDC is a key example of GranBio’s mission to “Enable Net ZeroTM” solutions through the development and deployment of sustainable biomass-based technologies across the biofuels, biochemicals, and advanced biomaterials sectors. The partnership with Birla Carbon materializes a common strategy to enable net-zero emission in tires and the automotive value chain.”