PACE launches Europe’s first full-scale retrofitted biorefinery to transform potato juice into biofuels

A new European flagship project is set to demonstrate at industrial scale, how an underutilised side-stream from the potato processing industry can become a valuable source of sustainable chemicals.

PACE (Potato Juice to Fatty Acids for New Bio-based Value-Chains in Europe) will demonstrate a first-of-its-kind flagship biorefinery by retrofitting part of Royal Avebe’s existing production facility.

Using advanced fermentation and microbial chain elongation, the facility will convert potato juice side-streams into valuable biobased medium-chain fatty acids.

The project represents an important step toward reducing Europe’s dependency on fossil and palm oil-based chemistry while strengthening local, circular value chains. By integrating circular solutions into existing industrial infrastructure, PACE demonstrates how industrial side-streams can be transformed into scalable and commercially relevant chemical building blocks.

Niels van Stralen, project coordinator said: “PACE demonstrates how circular chemistry can become part of existing industrial systems at a meaningful scale. By upgrading infrastructure that already exists and using locally available side-streams, we show that sustainable chemistry does not have to start from scratch.

“PACE is an important example of how Europe can build more resilient and circular chemical value chains.”

The PACE consortium will now focus on the first implementation activities required for the establishment of the biorefinery and the optimisation of the MCFA production process. In parallel, partners will advance the validation of bio-based MCFAs in targeted industrial applications, while carrying out sustainability, circularity and market uptake assessments to support future replication across Europe.

Stakeholder engagement, knowledge exchange and communication activities will accompany these efforts, ensuring collaboration across the value chain and supporting the wider deployment of circular bio-based solutions.