MILAN, Italy - Biobased chemicals company GFBiochemicals, Milan, Italy, is starting commercialization of its levulinic acid. Commercial-scale production will start in the summer of 2015 in a planted located in Caserta, Italy.

A new management team has been put in place to take GFBiochemicals forward. Marcel van Berkel is GFBiochemicals’ Chief Commercial Officer. Van Berkel spent over 25 years at Solvay and DSM, including in DSM’s Bio-based Products and Services division. Davide Gremmi joins the company as Chief Financial Officer. Gremmi has over 20 years of finance experience, most recently at Chemtex Group. Marcello Taglietti is the Chief Operating Officer with over 20 years of experience, including at Air Products and Ashland. Rudy Parton and Aris de Rijke will spearhead research and development as Director, Technology & Applications Development, and Director, Technology & Engineering. Both have over 25 years of experience at DSM and Shell.

CEO Maxim Katinov commented, “Our team of experts has decades of experience in innovation, production and business development. We are now perfectly placed to bring biobased levulinic acid to market and enable new applications that will replace petro-based products.”

GFBiochemicals’ process technology has been developed and tested at the demo-scale since 2008. The Caserta plant will scale-up to 8,000 MT per year by 2017.

For more information visit GFBiochemicals.com.