Australian-based biomaterials company Nanollose is placing all its eggs into the textile industry by solely focusing on scaling its tree-free cellulosic fibre production from development phase into commercial success.
In recent years, the business has run several projects across textiles, agricultural inputs and leather alternatives, but a letter from the company’s managing director Andrew Moullin confirmed the Western Australian-based enterprise will now just focus on Nullarbor fibre production.
Moullin told shareholders that there are several globally significant opportunities Nanollose could address if it had the resources, but, after an extensive review, textiles appears to have the strongest return on investment.
Strategically, he said, focusing solely on Nullarbor fibre production will allow the company to deliver real traction, instead of remaining ‘in development’ indefinitely.
“The global textile industry consumes over 300 million trees every year to produce man-made cellulosic fibre. This is a major issue in isolation, and it is further compounded as deforestation degrades soil, destroys biodiversity, can lower the water table, and production relies on chemical-intensive processes, and consumes further large volumes of water,” Moullin said.
“At every level of the value chain, from fibre producers to fabric makers to global brands and consumers, there is growing, urgent and largely unmet demand for diversified, sustainable feedstock sources.”
Alongside this, governments globally are accelerating the sustainability push. The European Union’s Deforestation Regulation appears to be forcing major producers to find non-forestry feedstocks. The annual global regenerated fibre market is estimated to be between US$30 billion and US$53 billion (~A$42.7b to ~A$75.5b), with the regenerated cellulose fibre sub-market sitting around US$20 billion.
All these markets are expected to grow modestly over the next few years.
Moullin added that a multi-million tonne cellulose supply gap is emerging in this data, but noted that while the industry needs solutions, these should allow businesses to adopt without discarding existing mega-infrastructure.
This is where Nanollose’s Nullarbor fibre comes in, which Moullin noted uses a fraction of the land required for standard cellulosic fibre, and is immune to forestry regulation.
“The challenge, and our near-term focus, is to reduce production costs,” Moullin said. “Work to advance scaled, cheaper production is underway and we will be able to provide further information regarding this shortly.”
In recent months, Nanollose has improved its Nullarbor fibre production process by at least 60 per cent. Despite this shift, there are still issues to fix.
“At present, the primary engineering focus is drying/dewatering our material while retaining its solubility,” Moullin said. “Perfecting this single step cost-effectively at scale is a surprisingly complex task. If we were a multinational corporation, we might spend several years and significant capital optimising it. Nanollose does not have, and does not require, that luxury.”
Nanollose is already adopting a modular approach, aiming to implement a functional drying solution rapidly, simply to keep moving, “even if this is inefficient compared to industrial standards”.
“We can do this because our laboratory breakthroughs mean that even using less efficient drying methods, our overall process is still at least 60 pr cent more efficient than our historic baseline.
“This should allow us to generate momentum and material sooner, knowing we can substitute in better drying modules as we develop them and as manufacturing scales.”
The company has commenced international equipment evaluation trials, with some initial results expected very soon.
“We are also experimenting further with the treatment processes, targeting the removal of an entire stage of our already relatively streamlined process, and its associated cost and environmental impact,” Moullin said.
The single most important goal in all this, according to Moullin, is establishing a dedicated microbial cellulose pulp production line capable of producing enough pulp for multiple tonnes of Nullarbor fibre per month.
As for the funding side, Nanollose is calling on partners to fund manufacturing infrastructure through a buy-up of options, with a goal of raising up to $2 million.