China’s non-food feedstock plan for biomanufacturing
China is making steady progress on manufacturing with non-food biomass. This is THE KEY for the biomanufacturing revolution
Key takeaways:
The government shifted focus from using non-food biomass as a feedstock for bioenergy toward broader applications in industrial biomanufacturing.
Companies have got the message (see tables at end of article). Chinese companies are producing biomanufactured goods with non-food biomass.
There is a real focus on saccharification of non-food biomass feedstocks. Getting that fundamental step to price parity would solve a lot of problems.
The collection and transportation of biomass remains unsolved at scale and is not really addressed in depth within most government documents. I expect this to change over the next few years.
China has slowly become serious about non-food bio-feedstocks.
For the bio-industrial revolution to happen, the world needs to find cheap, reliable bio-feedstocks that do not compete with food. That is the attraction of biotech: the feedstock can be renewably grown and then transformed into basically any product using advanced biotechnology. One day hopefully at a very low price.
At the moment, most industrial biomanufacturing uses food-based feedstocks like sugar, starch or grain. Finding alternatives is the key to winning the industrial biotech revolution.
The PRC government has beefed up its plans to utilise non-food feedstocks in the last two to three years. This sits within the government’s recent higher priority for the bioeconomy and biomanufacturing.
Previously, non-food biomass in China was mainly seen as a potential source of energy. Non-food feedstocks have been mentioned in government plans for decades, mainly around cellulosic ethanol production in China. As with the rest of the world, it has been unsuccessful (page 25 of this IEA report).
The 2023 Action Plan
In 2023, six govt department headed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the “Three-Year Action Plan for Accelerating the Innovative Development of Non-Food Bio-Based Materials” [加快非粮生物基材料创新发展三年行动方案].
For non-food biomass in China, this was a watershed moment. The plan laid out five feedstock-specific goals across the text (the goals are not listed 1 through 5, we have pulled them from different parts of the text), as well as many more biomanufacturing goals beyond feedstocks. This article is only concerned about the feedstock goals.
Four observations:
The goals vary between vague and relatively specific but with no quantitative hard targets to give the government wiggle room.
We have seen some sort of progress toward all the goals (except the govt coordination one which is unclear), although probably none have been fully achieved.
Most of the goals focus on improving technology for processing feedstocks rather than collecting and transporting them.
I would expect to see a follow up plan in the next year or so.
The goals of the Action Plan (and their outcomes)
Goal 1: The utilization and application technologies for non-food biomass feedstocks to become largely mature. (非粮生物质原料利用和应用技术基本成熟)
Outcome: Modest progress. This is one of the vague goals. Globally there has been steady progress toward utilising non-food biomass technology. A growing number of PRC companies (and companies globally) are producing non-energy products from non-food biomass (See Table 1 and Table 2 at the end).
Goal 2 Promote the standardization of the saccharification processes for non-food biomass, improve the separation efficiency of lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose, and optimize a suite of enzymatic saccharification technologies. (推进非粮生物质原料糖化工艺标准化，提高木质素与纤维素、半纤维素分离效率，优化系列酶解糖化技术)
Outcome: Decent progress. Henan Qiye has built a 10kt facility to saccharify corn-based cellulose and lignose. Guangzhou Yingding also building a 60kt facility that I judge will saccharify corn waste and bamboo to produce sugars for fermentation (although our source article does not explicitly say it). Suzhou Polynovo Biotech Co., Ltd have also built a plant for biomass saccharification. See appendix 1 at the end of the article. I would guess we will find other facilities as our team searches over the next few months (Contact us if you know of such facilities).
Goal 3 Industrial microbial strain development systems and enzyme component libraries to be established for different types of non-food biomass. (针对不同非粮生物质原料构建工业菌种培育体系与酶蛋白元件库)
Outcome: Modest progress The Guangzhou provincial government announced plans to build the nation's largest enzyme and strain library by 2027. So there is a pathway to achieve this goal, but it has not happened yet. Many companies will be building their own libraries too.
Goal 4: The establishment of a ten-thousand-ton-scale polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production line demonstration project utilising non-food biomass feedstocks. (万吨级聚羟基脂肪酸酯生产线开展非粮生物质原料替代示范)
Outcome: Modest progress PHA is a biodegradable plastic that was largely dominated by foreign players. Left unsaid in this goal is a desire to escape foreign dominance (even with food-based feedstocks). That part has been achieved. But the non-food feedstock part remains to be achieved.
Pha Builder 微构工场 in partnership with Angel Yeast 安琪酵母 (the JV is called Weiqi Biotech 微琪生物) recently opened a 30,000 tonne PHA production line. It likely uses traditional food feedstocks. They have plans to use non-food biomass in the future.
Another company, Bluepha, produces PHA using bio-based feedstocks. Their website says the company uses “a wide range of feedstock including starch, plant oil, sugarcane, etc., to meet different customer needs.” In practice the majority of feedstocks seem to be food-based with plans to move into non-food biomass, a media write up of the company states:
“Bluepha (蓝晶微生物) invests 50% of its annual revenue into R&D, focusing on breakthroughs in 'non-grain feedstock conversion' and 'ultra-high-density fermentation' technologies. To date, the company has raised over 1.5 billion yuan (approx. USD 210 million).”
Goal 5: Strengthen interdepartmental coordination and collaboration between central and local governments to jointly advance the conversion of non-food biomass into raw materials and promote the application of bio-based materials and products. Local governments are encouraged to integrate local non-food biomass resources with rural development needs.(加强部门协同和部省联动，协力推进非粮生物质原料化利用和生物基材料及制品应用。鼓励地方政府统筹当地非粮生物质资源和乡村发展需要)
Outcome: Unclear. It is hard to tell whether governments in China are really collaborating more on this technology.
So, the overall mark is steady progress toward incorporating non-feed feedstocks into industrial biomanufacturing. There will likely be ongoing significant government support for this effort.
Specific companies using non-food biomass
Below I have prepared two tables. The first has examples of companies that are producing products using non-food bio-feedstocks. The second table has examples of companies which claim they want to produce products from bio-feedstocks.
（Methodology note: this is not a full list and our team will build a much more comprehensive database. We developed this appendix from a single article which listed some of the leading companies using non-food biomass. We have longer lists but it is impossible to go through them in the eight hours available to prepare this substack)
Table 2