The Short Life of Photanol's EIC Accelerator CO2 Bioplastic Bet

Photanol B.V., a University of Amsterdam spin-out, engineered cyanobacteria to turn carbon dioxide and sunlight directly into lactic acid, the building block of the bioplastic PLA. In the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 it won a grant for RePLAy, "Reinventing bioplastic: CO2 + sunlight = PLA", with an EU contribution of €2,264,062.50 towards a total cost of €3,234,375, according to CORDIS. The company appears under its own name, as the only beneficiary of RePLAy, in the European Commission's list of the June 2019 winners. The money helped it bring a demonstration plant in Delfzijl into production in 2021. On 25 February 2025 the Amsterdam district court declared Photanol bankrupt, according to the Dutch insolvency record and the trustee's public report.

The bankruptcy is still open. In June 2025 the trustee sold the patents, the bacterial strains, the trademark, the know-how and the equipment in Amsterdam and Delfzijl to RPG Industries B.V. for €300,000 excluding VAT. The buyer now trades as "R Photanol", the trustee writes. What R Photanol has done with the technology since then is not public.

A Bankruptcy, and a Buyer for the Bacteria

The collapse came from one decision. According to the trustee's first report, Photanol had worked since late 2020 with another company, which the trustee does not name, on a project to make propylene and ethylene. From mid-2024 the two planned a joint venture to start on 1 January 2025. In early December 2024 the partner said it would not go ahead. Photanol had already borrowed €1 million from a third party on 26 March 2024 and €750,000 from its shareholders, enough to pay its costs to the end of 2024 but no further. It could not pay salaries for January and February 2025, the trustee reports. The partner's withdrawal and the failed search for bridge money were also reported by Biofuels Digest and Silicon Canals in March 2025.

The trustee then ran a sale. Three serious bidders emerged; two dropped out or made offers the trustee called "extremely disappointing". The third, RPG Industries, first wanted only the Delfzijl site and the lab equipment and then widened its bid. The sale agreement was signed on 2 June 2025. RPG rented part of the Amsterdam lab, took over the Delfzijl site and hired two former Photanol employees, the trustee writes. The €300,000 price and the list of assets were also reported by FaillissementsDossier.nl, citing Industrielinqs, in August 2025. By September 2026 the transfer of the trademark in the WIPO register was still not complete, and the trustee's investigation into the causes of the bankruptcy and any mismanagement was still running. A second company, Photanol X B.V., set up for two subsidy projects, was declared bankrupt on 15 July 2025.

The claims show how little is left. Unsecured creditors had filed €5,150,178.09 by mid-2026. Renolit Healthcare filed a preferential claim of €1,077,103.49, the tax authority €368,898 and the employee insurance agency UWV €198,560.79. The estate held €135,683.17 in September 2026. None of the three creditors holding pledges over the patents received a payout from the asset sale, according to the trustee. Renolit was named on Photanol's website as its "trusted innovation partner"; what its claim is for is not stated in the public report.

Bacteria That Make Chemicals From Air and Light

Cyanobacteria use photosynthesis to grow on CO2 and sunlight. Photanol changed their genes so that they release a chosen chemical, such as lactic acid, instead of building only biomass, and grew them in transparent tube reactors. The approach differs from today's PLA, which depends mainly on food crops as its feedstock, CORDIS notes. Photanol said its process captured 1.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of lactic acid and used 24 times less land and 25 times less water than current methods, and was seven times more productive than crops, according to its CORDIS report. These are the company's own figures; no independent test of them is public. Its patents covered lactic acid, glycolic acid, acetic acid, 3-hydroxybutyric acid, ethylene and propylene, the trustee lists, and its website says its strains could make 20 carbon compounds.

Photanol's main task was to prove its yields at scale. In early 2023 it said it had reached "record titers at pilot scale" and was repeatedly making kilogram samples that were tested by the chemicals company Nobian, according to a company post. The yields themselves were never published.

What RePLAy Promised, and What It Delivered

RePLAy ran from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2021. Its plan, as set out on CORDIS, was to operate a demonstration plant, a scaled-down version of a commercial plant, to validate the technical and economic parameters and produce a first batch of end product; to make all financial and technical preparations for a commercial plant; and to find commercial partners for a joint venture and first offtake agreements. The final report also said there was "an urgency for Photanol to start delivering its solution by 2024".

The plant was the part that happened. Photanol had announced the Delfzijl plant on a site of its partner AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals in 2018, after an €8 million financing round, with a target of 2020, according to Agro & Chemistry and Renewable Carbon News. The plant began running with lactic acid strains in July 2021, according to Innovation Origins and Agro & Chemistry, a year late but within the project period. The CORDIS report confirms that a demonstration plant was "realised". It also shows a change of course: it lists glycolic acid, ethylene and propylene next to lactic acid, and says nothing about PLA made from Photanol's lactic acid.

1. Operate a demonstration plantDeliveredDelfzijl plant in production from July 2021, per Innovation Origins and CORDIS.
2. Validate technical and economic parametersNot publicNo yields, costs or results published.
3. First batch of end product (PLA)PartlyKilogram product samples by 2023; no PLA made from them announced.
4. Prepare a commercial plantNot achievedNo commercial plant built or financed before the 2025 bankruptcy.
5. Joint venture and first offtake agreementsNot achievedThe only joint venture on record collapsed in December 2024; no offtake deal announced.

Grants pay for development, and Photanol did build and run its plant. The project's commercial goals were not met, and PLA, the product in the project's name, never appeared.

The Money Behind the Bacteria

Photanol lived on shareholder money, subsidies and partner fees, and "no profit was generated yet" from its activities, the trustee writes. Its shareholders were regional and university investment funds: Investeringsfonds Groningen, the northern development agency NOM, Groeifonds and UvA Ventures Holding. Icos Capital was an earlier investor named in the 2018 round. No later equity round is on record, and Photanol is not among the companies on the EIC Fund's list of investments; its 2019 award was a grant only. Photanol also took part in two earlier Horizon 2020 projects: cTerF, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship it hosted with €177,598.80 in EU funding, and ENGICOIN, where its share of EU funding was €637,750.

The filed accounts quoted by the trustee show revenue falling from €1,758,845 in 2021 to €890,186 in 2022 and €431,871 in 2023. In 2023 the company lost €5,595,220 and its balance sheet total fell from €9,109,824 to €1,132,953. In October 2021 it had asked to defer about €251,518 of VAT because of the pandemic. Two sets of accounts, for 2020 and 2022, were filed late; the 2024 accounts were never filed. Photanol had 21 full-time staff during RePLAy, according to CORDIS; the trustee gave notice to 20 staff on 3 March 2025.

Why Europe Should Care

Photanol worked on two EU priorities at once: replacing fossil plastics and using captured CO2 as a raw material. The European Commission's policy framework for bio-based plastics warns that bio-based plastics can drive land-use competition with food crops, and steers production away from primary food crops, the problem RePLAy wanted to avoid. Photanol was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2019. Its story also shows a gap that grants did not close: a working demo plant is still far from a factory, and when one industrial partner left, there was no investor ready to pay for the next step.

The Verdict

This article is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout. Photanol's trustee, RPG Industries and the EIC were not asked for comment.