Avantium

Catalytic R&D for groundbreaking innovations. Avantium was founded in February 2000 as a spin-off from Shell. The objective was to accelerate and exploit the application of high-throughput R&D, initially developed by Shell for catalysis research, across a range of industries.

An international consortium of strategic, financial and university partners joined to set up Avantium as a technology company specialized in high-throughput R&D.

During the first years of our existence, our strategic aim was to apply high-throughput technology across a range of applications and industries.

Avantium invested significant resources both to advance the technology they acquired when they separated from Shell and to develop new systems and associated software.

After the inception period, Avantium decided to focus on providing high-throughput technology-based R&D services to companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Avantium decided in 2015 to offer R&D systems because customers had shown interest in applying high-throughput techniques in their own laboratories.

While continuing to successfully expand their services and systems business, Avantium made the strategic decision in 2005 to leverage their expertise in high-throughput R&D by initiating their own proprietary development programs.

This was the beginning of our YXY technology: based on their strengths in catalytic development, they created a novel technology to convert plant-based carbohydrates to Furanics building blocks for making biobased chemicals, materials and fuels.

This technology has evolved from an idea in 2005, to an R&D project in the following years, to the demonstration of the technology at our pilot plant in Geleen in 2011, and has moved to the stage of commercialization as evidenced by the creation of multiple partnerships.

In 2011, Avantium divested its pharmaceutical business, which became an independent company called Crystallics that relocated to the business park Amsterdam Medical Center.

In 2015, Avantium sold its crystallization systems business to Technobis.

With this divestment Avantium has become a focused company in the field of technology and renewable chemicals.

Today, Avantium has a leading position in providing advanced catalysis services & systems to companies in the oil, gas, chemical and renewable industry, while concurrently commercializing the YXY technology for making biobased chemicals and bioplastics, and undertaking similar development projects into breakthrough technologies for renewable chemistry under the name of Renewable Chemistries.

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