Fairbrics is a French scaleup which has set up, with the aid of FIT, a Belgian facility. Fairbrics converts CO2 into polyester for clothing production. It came to Antwerp because of the presence of the chemical industry (and the emissions of CO2). It has established a lab in BlueChem, will run a pilot in BlueApp and will later set up a pilot plant in NextGen. Fairbrics raised 22 million euro.

In 2026 it should produce 1 ton polyester per day. After that a full-fledged production factory should be built that can convert 50.000 ton CO2 per year. The cost of this plant is 150 million euro. Fairbrics has already an agreement with H&M.

IOT sensors

A fine example of digitalisation in the chemical industry is the use of IOT sensors. These sensors replace manual control of meters at valves. Aloxy is a successful scale up that develops this kind of sensors. BASF in Antwerp, Shell in the US and companies in Brazil and Singapore are using Aloxy’s sensor systems. The Aloxy position sensor won the "BASF Sicherheitmacher Team Award 2022" for their project "Monitoring of emergencies and eye showers with innovative position sensors".

Aloxy is a spin-off of the University of Antwerp and imec, and resident of The Beacon. Aloxy expanded to the US and raised 3.8 million euro capital from local investors including QBIC II, imec.istart, University of Antwerp, Innovation Fund and Industrya.

In January 2024, Aloxy announced its collaboration with Dow Chemical Company, a global leader in the chemical industry, to scale up implementation of their valve position indication systems across different DOW facilities globally.

Residual heat

Antwerp has a major player in the domain of using residual heat in industry: Qpinch. This scaleup has developed an innovative chemical concept that raises the temperature of residual heat and consequently reduces the energy consumption drastically. It signed contracts with Boortmalt, Borealis, the Japanese Chiyoda and one of the Saudi majors, Sabic. Qpinch raised 14 million euro capital. One of the shareholders is Port of Antwerp-Bruges.

Water recycling

A lot of industrial companies drain their polluted water to water recycling plants. BlueChem company Inopsys cleans polluted water on site in mobile installations. More efficient and with a higher recovery of valuable components as a circular bonus.

End of 2020 Inopsys raised 5,2 million capital with Innovation Fund – a fund from and for the chemical industry -, the Flemish governmental fund PMV, private Telos Impact and Aliad, the venturing fund of Air Liquide. It is a perfect example how venture capital is working in Antwerp: private, public, sectoral and corporate funding together in one deal.

In 2022 Inopsys opened a swiss branch.

March 2024: Inopsys is acquired by Indaver for 30M EUR.

Breaking down CO2

One of the big issues is finding solutions for CO2 reduction.

University of Antwerp spin off D-CRBN works on a promising plasma technology to break down CO2 into its original building blocks carbon & oxygen and then use these to produce biofuels, chemicals and polymers. This is a double dividend.

• In 2023 D-CRBN reached a major milestone with the launch of its CO₂ Recycling Pilot Line with a remarkable annual capacity of 1000 tons.

• D-CRBN is awarded a €2.5 Million Grant from European Innovation Council Accelerator Program.

• D-CRBN is part of the ICON-project worth 3.6 mio euro together with Arcelor Mittal, Engie, BASF, Vopak, University of Antwerp and VITO.

The British chemical company Ineos invests 3 billion euro in Antwerp in its so called Project One. This is an unseen investment in the European chemical industry. Project One is the code name for an ethane cracker that will transform ethane into ethylene. Using ethane instead of nafta saves 2 million ton CO2 a year.