The Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy provides an opportunity for European innovation and differentiation. In certain areas, the chemical industry has been using substantial volumes of renewable raw materials. Furthermore, the use of alternative feedstock in the chemical industry is gaining importance in light of increasing oil prices and finite fossil resources. Although our industry will remain predominantly petrochemicals-based in the next decades, there is potential for an increased use of bio-based feedstock - not only for the production of specialty chemicals but also of the key building blocks of high-volume chemicals.

 One key limitation for the bioeconomy to develop in Europe is the availability of  renewable feedstock at competitive prices and in sufficient quality and quantity. The European bioeconomy definitely needs to be based on a mix of home-grown and imported raw materials, due to a foretasted limited availability of biomass in Europe.

Biomass today is already being widely used in the production of food and feed, the pulp and paper industries as well as for the bio-fuel industry. A broad base of locally  developed and imported renewable feedstock will be required in order to develop a successful bioeconomy in Europe.

In order for the demand generation process to be economically viable and sustainable, the approach must be definitely market- driven, by consumers’ requirements and expectations. In this respect, the use of mandatory targets should be avoided. Moreover, taxation policy should not create any distortion of competition or conflicts of interests between value chains, as is presently the case for instance with biofuels, biomass for energy or animal fats incorporated in bio-fuels, clearly detrimental to the use of renewable feedstock in the chemical industry.

Agrochemicals -Global Growth

During the last few decades, the market for agrochemicals has seen periods of growth as well as periods of decline. To a large extent, these market fluctuations are due to fluctuations in the weather and pest incidence. In some years, farmers need more crop protection chemicals than they do in others.

The long-term trend, however, is growth. The growth of renewable energy requirements and improving crop yields are two drivers of this but undoubtedly the key one is the growth of the world's population growth has accelerated significantly since the mid-20th century. The need for food is therefore increasing rapidly.

In 13 years from now, the world will need food for 1.1 billion more people than there were in 2010, a 16% increase. In 2050, 2.4 billion more people will need to be fed, a 35% increase.

In order to be able to feed all these people, some have estimated that the world would need additional arable land the size of India. Clearly that is not available. The only other way to try to feed all those people is via the intensification of agriculture, specifically in those areas where agriculture is still done in a very traditional way.

Intensifying agriculture and improving yields is a major challenge and it seems very unlikely that this can be done without the use of crop protection chemicals. As a result, the general trend for the agrochemicals market is continued growth, although fluctuations round the trend line will occur, due to external factors like the weather.