CIRCLE Flagship marks breakthroughs in circular biorefinery innovation

The CIRCLE Flagship project has celebrated its first anniversary, marking 12 months of pioneering work in industrial scale biorefinery retrofitting and circular biobased chemical production.
Launched on 1 September 2024, CIRCLE has already delivered a suite of technical, scientific and outreach milestones that position it at the forefront of Europe’s circular bioeconomy.
During its first year, CIRCLE successfully completed the Front End Engineering Design for the flagship facility.
Additionally, TripleW, in collaboration with Sulzer, produced the world's first food waste-based PLA bioplastic from TripleW’s lactic acid stream.
The resulting PLA was used to make a cosmetic packaging prototype by Sulapac.
This exciting milestone was reached significantly ahead of schedule under WP6 and is a critical step in establishing a fully integrated value chain for the production of biochemicals from food waste.
All active WPs have made great progress and on time submission of every planned deliverable was achieved.
CIRCLE (Circular Initiative for Recycling and waste Conversion into Lactate Extracts) is a four-year Innovation Action (1 September 2024 – 31 August 2028) funded by the Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking under Horizon Europe (HORIZON-JU-CBE-2023-IAFlag-02).