From forests to footwear midsoles
It only became a player in the $30 billion global market for MEG (mono-ethylene glycol) recently, but UPM Biochemicals is determined to drive change immediately by using bio-based raw materials to make this key ingredient of polyurethane and polyester. It is building strong relationships with important suppliers in the footwear industry, including Dongsung Chemical.
Finnish industrial group UPM, best known for its forestry and paper manufacturing activities, now has a range of business areas across which it seeks to “innovate for a future beyond fossils”. One of these is UPM Biochemicals.
The group made its move into the biochemicals business at the start of 2020 and announced a plan to build a biorefinery at Leuna, near Leipzig, in an investment it values at €750 million. This is a group project and a number of business units will benefit from it. The factory will produce a range of 100% wood-based biochemicals to help brands and manufacturers of finished products, including shoes and clothes, switch from fossil raw materials to sustainable alternatives.
For more than a decade, biorefineries producing chemicals have been part of the UPM plan. It has long wanted to find new markets for its in-depth knowledge of wood and forests and biorefineries offer opportunities for making use of the wide range of chemicals based on a lignin cellulosic sugar platform that trees can provide. There are a number of reasons for its desire to diversify, but one of the most powerful is that the popularity of printed newspapers has been in stark decline since the 1990s. Washington DC-based think-tank The Pew Research Center reports that, in the US alone, total daily newspaper circulation has fallen from 62.3 million copies per day in 1990 to 24.3 million copies in 2020. A corollary of this is that, although the paper and pulp business remains attractive to UPM, it sees clearly the importance of broadening its portfolio.
The Leuna investment will open up “totally new markets” with large potential for growth, the group believes. “The long-term business opportunities for the project are excellent,” says group chief executive, Jussi Pesonen. “There is keen interest in wood-based biochemicals.”
Renewable polyurethane
To prove the point, and with the Leuna biorefinery still under construction, UPM Biochemicals recently announced a partnership with Korean group Dongsung Chemical. The companies have said they will work together to accelerate the introduction of renewable, sustainable forest-sourced materials to reduce fossil resource consumption.
Operations at Leuna are on track to begin before the end of 2023 and one of the products the factory will make is bio-based mono-ethylene glycol (MEG), which Dongsung Chemical intends to develop into renewable polyurethane (PU) for use, initially, in footwear. Its chief executive, ManWoo Lee, says this is part of a wider strategy of “focusing on carbon-reduction projects”.
A world beyond fossils
The sales director for glycols at UPM Biochemicals, Marvin Strüfing, says he is certain products such as the bio-based MEG that Dongsung will incorporate into its supply chain will work well. He also believes this to be a good use of the European group’s years of knowledge of how to produce and use wood as a renewable resource. UPM launched under its present name in 1995, but its roots go back to the 1870s. “Bioglycols are one of the best ideas to come from our commitment to stick to forests, but move ahead towards a world beyond fossils,” he insists. The biorefinery at Leuna will work with beech from well stocked, well maintained forest resources in this part of Germany, all with certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
These forests, of course, are an important tool in the battle against climate change because each tree captures carbon throughout its life. But there is a complication. Beech is not available in the Nordic countries where UPM sources large volumes of wood. It is a hardwood, the type required for the biorefinery’s processes, that grows well in Germany. It has long been in demand in the furniture sector and, because furniture producers only want the trunks, the branches tend to be burned. For a long time, this has looked to the market like waste but UPM is enthusiastic about using the branches; they also have what Mr Strüfing refers to as good sugar composition and, therefore, are part of the resource that could go into products such as bio-based MEG.
Burning question
“At the moment, around 70% of the molecules from those trees are burned,” he explains, “This is a pity because the trees capture carbon while growing, then burning the wood releases a lot of that carbon back. What we have realised is that it is better to keep the carbon in and use it as a chemical building block. We can take that part of the wood that is being burned and create, from the sugars, products for the footwear industry and other sectors.”
He points out that the global glycols market is big, with a value of around $30 billion. It is not that producing a bio-based mono-ethylene glycol would have been impossible before now, but his assessment is that many of the older hands in this market were happy with the status quo. “They are making good money,” Mr Strüfing points out, “and probably don’t want to change to a bio-based set-up. If they have talked about changing, they have mentioned 2050 as a target.” Until 2050, it seems they are mainly happy to keep making cash in the time-honoured way, whereas UPM Biochemicals, which is much newer to this segment, wants to drive change now.
“I come from the fossil industry myself,” the Hamburg-based sales director continues, “so I know the mentality. But I am a keen runner and I have always had inside my head what I call a ‘green desire’, a vision of a green, healthy life.”
Shoes in view
Footwear was an obvious market for the group’s biochemicals business to look into. Athletic shoes and other types of footwear often use PU, and PU requires glycol. It identified Dongsung as a serious, experienced player in the footwear materials sector, making mostly materials for midsoles, and decided to make contact with its new South Korean partner. The two companies have built up their relationship from there.
Mr Strüfing describes Dongsung as being strong in research and development, respectful of intellectual property, and as having a chief executive, ManWoo Lee, who is passionate about sustainability. It has good ties to many major footwear brands and a broad manufacturing footprint across South Korea. It also has factories in two other key south-east Asian shoe-producing countries, Indonesia and Vietnam. These facilities will have no difficulty in switching to bio-based MEG, he insists, calling the product that UPM Biochemicals will supply “a drop-in solution that is easy to integrate”.
When it comes, though, the change will allow Dongsung to make PU that is only partially bio-based, because MEG is only one of the ingredients that go into making the polymer, working as a chain prolonger. The new UPM product will allow Dongsung to make polyurethane that is around 25% bio-based, Mr Strüfing suggests, but he immediately adds that this percentage could go up in the future; work is already going on to support suppliers of other ingredients for PU in their efforts to have greener products, too.
He has wider footwear ambitions for the product. If a brand wants an upper made from polyester fibres, bio-based MEG could make up 33% of the polyester. “We can help polyester become more sustainable,” he says, “and this can help make shoe uppers and also clothing, including running apparel, more holistic and more circular.”
Plain and easy
On the key question, in these days of pushing back against greenwashing, of how footwear brands should go about explaining to consumers accurately and fairly what is different about materials that use bio-based MEG, he says clarity is the key. He explains: “We need to make the message plain and easy to understand: these materials will come, at least in part, from sustainable forests. Consumers are right to ask questions; interaction with consumers is much better than thinking you can hand all the information to the consumer on a silver platter.”
He adds that there is much that UPM Biochemicals and its partners can tell the public to help people form a clearer understanding of the things they are buying and of the materials that have gone into making those products. “In my opinion,” he says, “an interesting starting point would be to talk about food conflict. If bio-based materials come from sugar cane, consumers are going to want to know if the same raw material could have helped feed people who are hungry. Part of our explanation can be to make it clear that we are not going in that direction. Our products cause no food conflict, need no fertiliser, no pesticide and no irrigation. For us, it’s not just talk.”
ALL CREDITS: UPM
