Australia-based biotechnology company Circa Group, established in 2006, produces versatile, bio-based platform chemical levoglucosenone (LGO) from waste cellulose.

The company has now announced a new e-commerce shop which enables LGO and some of its derivatives to be directly purchased for research and discovery purposes.

LGO is an outstanding building block with applications in a wide range of areas, such as pharmaceuticals – including coronavirus therapeutics – agrochemicals, bio-based polymers and the flavours and fragrances industries. Until recently, many LGO-based products were only available on a very small scale with little proven technology to synthesise them on a larger scale.

Circa’s prototype plant in Tasmania, Australia uses the patented Furacell process to produce around 1000 kg per month of LGO-based products. Further increase in production capacity will come with Circa’s new plant, which is set to produce 1,000 tonnes per year of bio-based solvent Cyrene. Located in Eastern France, engineering work has recently begun and the estimated commissioning date is end of 2022.

Dr Jason Camp, CTO of Circa Group, said, “We are delighted that our new e-commerce shop will allow researchers to access the core LGO platform rapidly, with the assurance these products will soon be available in commercial scales. Our green manufacturing process provides the innovation necessary to convert base material cellulose into high-value chemical building blocks – we invite parties interested in making their products more sustainable to get in touch and find out more.”

https://circa-group.myshopify.com