X-post by Marco Astorri:
Translation by AI / SI:
Bio-On’s technology appears to have been real, supported by patents, licences, scientific research and the Minerbio pilot plant.
But that does not automatically prove that the technology was commercially viable at industrial scale.
So the key question is not “Did the technology exist?” but rather:
How mature was it, and could it genuinely be scaled into a competitive industrial process?
That is a much more precise—and potentially important—way of looking at the Bio-On case.
- https://www.openarchivebioon.eu/it/blog/la-tecnologia-di-bio-on-esiste-una-risposta-semplice-basata-sui-fatti
- https://www.openarchivebioon.eu/it
Personal Remarks
Marco Astorri was the golden boy of bioplastics. He built Bio-on into an Italian unicorn valued at around €2 billion, creating a market before having the production volumes to match — somewhat like Avantium is attempting with PEF today.
Bio-on also worked with some of the same major auditing names seen around Eni, Versalis and Novamont. Then came a devastating report from a US investment firm, followed by investigations, the collapse of the company and the dismantling of what had been Italy’s most promising bioplastics champions.
The Bio-on affair remains one of Italy’s biggest industrial-financial scandals of the past decade. Italy ultimately lost a significant bioplastics player.
d
