Coca-Cola Advances BioBased Bottles

Coca-Cola has signed agreements with the industrial biotech firms Virent, Gevo, and Avantium to advance its goal of producing polyester beverage bottles entirely from plants. Coca-Cola’s current polyethylene terephthalate PlantBottle is made with plant-derived ethylene glycol and petrochemical-based purified terephthalic acid (PTA). Virent uses catalytic chemistry to convert sugars into the PTA raw material p-xylene. Gevo produces fermentation-derived isobutyl alcohol, which can be converted into p-xylene. And Avantium uses catalysis to turn sugar into furan dicarboxylic acid, which is reacted with ethylene glycol to make a competing polyester called polyethylene furanoate. Coca-Cola says it chose the firms from 30 potential partners.