🏭 The Column: January 10, 2026

Good morning. Sending out a very brief Saturday edition this time—work is just a little busy right now. In fact, it’s so busy that we’re hiring! If you’re interested in joining me full-time at Solugen, we’re looking to hire an analytical generalist with deck and model-making chops to help me with business operations (and more). Let me know if you’re interested.

UPM is making sugars from wood

At a high level, you can think of biomass (plants, trees, etc.) as being composed of two types of polymers: polymers for energy storage, and polymers for structure. Your energy storage polymers are amylose and amylopectin (jointly referred to as starch) and your structural polymers are cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin (jointly referred to as lignocellulose). In an ideal world striving for sustainability, we’d attempt to replace petroleum-derived products with lignocellulose-derived products because lignocellulose doesn’t compete with demand for food (i.e. we can eat starch, but we can’t eat lignocellulose). However, lignocellulose is difficult to valorize chemically: the Kraft pulping process uses caustic to separate cellulose from the lignin and hemicellulose, but the remaining lignin and hemicellulose mixture (which is called “black liquor”) has historically been too costly to separate. So, to solve that separation issue, Finland’s premier pulping company, UPM, is rethinking the entire process—instead of using caustic up front, they are doing a hydrothermal step that doesn’t modify the lignin and hemicellulose so much that the black liquor is rendered inseparable. The details aren’t clear to me, but after about a year of commissioning, that separation unit is officially up and running, and UPM is officially converting all of that cellulose and hemicellulose into sugars. This could be a big deal. UPM intends on converting those sugars into glycols (MEG and MPG), and they can still bring that lignin to market by selling it as a functional filler. [LINK]

Other Things Happened:

A new maleic anhydride, malic acid, and fumaric acid plant is coming to West Virginia. Loop Industries and its JV partner awarded Toyo with the EPC contract for its first plant, set to be built in India. Capchem is building a carbonate solvent plant (for lithium ion batteries) in Saudia Arabia. Domo Chemicals filed for insolvency in Germany. Westlake is closing three chlorovinyl plants along the US Gulf Coast. Mitsubishi Chemical is increasing its carbon fiber production. SABIC is divesting its European petrochemical business and some of its engineering thermoplastic business. BASF is starting up its new steam cracker in Zhanjiang, China. Corteva and BP just formed a biofuel feedstock joint venture. Syensqo and Axens are working together on solid-state batteries. Phillips66 is going to handle the decommissioning of the Lindsey Refinery next door to its refinery in the UK. Mosaic sold its potash mine in New Mexico. Clariant is divesting its business in Venezuela.