English6 October, 2010 –Arnhem andAmsterdam, the Netherlands
Teijin Aramid and Avantium announced today that they have entered into an R&D partnership to explore high-performance polymers. The partnership builds on Teijin Aramid’s world leading position of polyaramids and Avantium’s catalytic technology for producing building blocks for green materials and fuels. Avantium is a research and technology company that is unlocking a new generation of biobased chemical building blocks, under the brand name YXY.
The companies will work together to explore the properties and commercial potential of high-performance polymers containing YXY building blocks. The companies will produce a range of polymer products containing Avantium’s YXY building blocks. Subsequently, Teijin Aramid plans to test these products for different applications. Teijin Aramid and Avantium have entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement with milestones for monitoring the progress towards commercialization of these new polymers. The partners have successfully secured a government grant to support part of the work under the agreement.
Gert Frederiks, CEO & President of Teijin Aramid: “Teijin Aramid is dedicated to fully understand the needs and requirements of our customers in order to empower their products and their business with the best solutions. We are therefore constantly looking for new ways to improve our polymer products and processes in order to deliver maximum added value to our customers. In Avantium we have found a partner that is excelling in the field of advanced high-throughput R&D and offers a line of biobased chemical building blocks for green polymers that will enable us to realize this ambition.”
“By partnering with Teijin Aramid we can develop a novel and exciting application for our YXY building blocks,” saidTom van Aken, CEO of Avantium. “Together with Teijin Aramid we aim to achieve a set of unique properties for polymer products using our biobased YXY building blocks. Teaming up with Teijin Aramid, a leader in this field, clearly accelerates the application development of materials containing YXY building blocks. This agreement is an important step to explore high-value added applications for our YXY biobased materials.”
About YXY
Avantium has developed YXY – a family of green building blocks for making materials and fuels that can compete on price and performance. YXY (pronounced ~ixy) is a patented technology that converts biomass into Furanics. It is the perfect solution for today’s challenges as it uses carbohydrates as feedstock, enabling the manufacture of green and sustainable products. This fast and cost-effective production process is based on Avantium’s catalytic technology. YXY can be implemented in existing chemical production methods. Avantium collaborates with leading companies such as NatureWorks, Teijin Aramid and DAF Trucks to start using green materials and fuels based on YXY building blocks. See www.yxy.com for more information.
