Avantium on a roll: Were the visionaries right, the nay-sayers wrong?

Avantium completed its first commercial FDCA plant after nearly two decades of development, last October, and start-up is underway. We had a good signal this week on prospects for the future, Avantium announced a capacity reservation agreement with BIOVOX who will use Avantium’s PEF (polyethylene furanoate) in various pharmaceutical applications. This PEF is expected to be produced in a future industrial-scale facility, based on a technology license from Avantium. The multi-year capacity reservation ensures BIOVOX preferred access to PEF volumes produced by Avantium’s future licensee network.

Just a week ago, Avantium announced its partnership with the Bottle Collective. Avantium PEF (polyethylene furanoate) will be integrated into the Dry Molded Fiber bottle process, enhancing the barrier performance and sustainability of the bottles. The Bottle Collective was launched in 2023 by PA Consulting, the global innovation and transformation consultancy, and PulPac, the Swedish R&D and Intellectual Property company behind the proprietary production process of Dry Molded Fiber. PulPac’s Dry Molded Fiber technology uses renewable pulp and cellulose resources to produce low-cost, high-performance fiber-based packaging. The process uses less CO2 than plastic and conventional wet molding options, with almost no water used in manufacturing.

So, Avantium now stands poised to commercialize PEF, a bio-based polymer with superior barrier properties, sustainability credentials, and high brand partner interest. It’s also shouldering €189 million in CAPEX, high burn, and an urgent need for scale, validation, and market trust.

The Success Conundrum

For too long in the bioeconomy, we have looked intently to techno-economics and technical readiness to tell us what to build, what will succeed. Yes, all the wonderful refineries that succeeded, they passed that test. Most of them, however, were iterations of a single plant that passed that test long ago. The first HEFA renewable diesel plant. The first dry-grind corn ethanol or can ethanol plant. The first soy biodiesel plant. And so forth.

Yet, if we look at all the first-of-kind technologies, TEA and TRL give us no better than coin-flip odds of predicting success. Speaking for myself as an observer, the reason is that the analyses are solid, but markets are fluid. It is not that we are looking at the wrong things in looking at feasibility — we are not looking at the whole spectrum, just part of the light, the part we feel most comfortable with. That reminds me of the person who went out shirtless on a cloudy day and wondered how we became badly sunburned; he took the visible light into account, not the infrared, the ultraviolet.

For a long time, I have worked on a way to analyze success not in the instant, but for the long term. Here’s what many people helped me to realize: the bioeconomy will not be built atop the best ideas, or even all of the good ones, but the ones which find a way to stick around. That’s what life is after all — our society is populated by the people and ideas which stuck around.

Turning to Avantium, the question that captures my interest, even more than “will Avantium succeed?” is “will Avantium persist?” It’s a dynamic question that static models find difficult to answer. Ultimately, it’s a thermodynamic question. Avantium takes in energy (ideas, effort, support, partners, feedstocks, parts, offtakes), just as living beings do. What makes life exist is that it exports entropy faster than it builds up — to persist in fluid markets, you have to be a living, evolving, adapting thing.

The New Vectors

So, I’d like to move beyond hype, efficiency, or even early wins—but on whether Avantium can resist collapse, adapt under pressure, and export entropy while maintaining structure and signal. That means testing Avantium across four GTESI vectors:

Vector Analysis: Avantium, May 2025

GTESI Vector	Signal	Interpretation
IPR – Information Persistence Rate	High	Avantium holds one of the strongest symbolic positions in the renewable materials space. With FDA approvals, the releaf brand, and high-credibility partners like BIOVOX, Haleon, and Diageo, its symbolic trust is robust.
SCD – Structural Continuity Density	Medium–High	The Delfzijl FDCA plant is complete and beginning start-up, with licensing strategy now operational. Capacity reservation agreements (e.g. BIOVOX) and integration into initiatives like the Bottle Collective signal real structural scaffolding.
TRFI – Trust Ritual Friction Index	Medium→ Declining	Early-stage startup friction remains—especially around capex strain, technology handoff, and operational proof. But recent news shows a strengthening ritual layer: timely updates, licensing signals, feedstock flexibility. Friction is present but being processed.
EED – Entropy Export Delta	Medium–High	PEF offers clear entropy export advantages: barrier properties, reduced GWP, recyclability, and light-weighting. Scaling through licensing shifts the entropy burden off Avantium’s books. Commercial flows must now validate margin and energy return at scale.

Diagnostic Summary: Sea Change Year, Friction Window

Avantium is executing a difficult maneuver: shifting from a tech-promise company to a platform-operator in motion. That pivot demands not only infrastructure but ritualized friction management. In GTESI terms, it’s a sea change year—where adaptive pressure (TRFI) must be absorbed and reframed into symbolic and economic persistence.

The BIOVOX agreement shows medical-grade trust. The Bottle Collective shows upstream and brand integration at global scale. The FDCA flagship plant is now in startup. Feedstock strategy spans both starch and post-consumer textiles—a rare 1st-and-2nd-gen dual-mode foundation. But friction still bites: Q4 results show capex strain, EBITDA losses, and a cash burn pattern that must soon reverse. GTESI’s lesson is clear: symbolic alignment (IPR) and licensing structure (SCD) can only carry so far. The thermodynamic regime must shift. Heat must become motion.

If Avantium smooths its TRFI curve and exports PEF through functioning licensees by Q4, it crosses into a new persistence zone—where the narrative, structure, and entropy flows finally harmonize. If not, it risks becoming another high-signal platform overrun by startup drag.

Takeaway for Founders, Investors, and Strategics

Watch the TRFI window. Not the vision, not the tech promise. The rituals. The cadence of start-up milestones. The material flows. The behavior under stress.

Avantium, if successful, will demonstrate a new model: one where entropy export, structural handoff, and symbolic retention fuse into a scalable persistence engine.

If they fail, it won’t be due to a lack of vision or technology. It’ll be because friction, unprocessed, became drag.