By Ludwig Burger and Arno Schuetze
FRANKFURT, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Dutch chemical technology firmAvantium plans to announce an initial public offering (IPO) thisweek to fund commercial production of plant-based plastics forCoca Cola bottles and Danone yoghurt cups, twopeople familiar with the plan told Reuters.
Avantium - which counts Dutch bank ING, Coca Cola,Danone and various venture capital firms among its owners -plans to raise more than 100 million euros ($112 million) fromnew shares, valuing the group at up to 300 million euros afterthe transaction, said one of the sources who asked not to benamed.
Avantium and German chemicals giant BASF lastweek unveiled plans to set up a joint venture and build aproduction facility for a medium triple-digit million-euroamount to produce chemical building blocks from plant-basedsugars.
The proceeds from the IPO, to be managed by ING and KBC, are earmarked to foot Avantium's part of the bill, thesources said.
Avantium and ING declined to comment. KBC was notimmediately available to comment.
Spun off from Royal Dutch Shell in 2000, Avantiumhas developed a chemical production procedure that feeds onfructose from plants rather than conventional oil derivatives.
This yields a chemical building block calledfurandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), which can be further processedinto a type of plastic that is more robust than the widely usedPET for bottles.
Apart from food packaging, the bioplastic is also usable fortextiles, electronic and automotive components.
Analysts say that many consumers prefer renewable-labeledpackaging but are prepared to pay only slightly more than theprice of petroleum-based equivalents.
The cost of production has been a major hurdle to renewableplastics becoming mainstream but Avantium claims its method iscost-competitive.
Developers of renewable plastics have long focused ongenetically engineered microbes that can ferment carbohydratesfrom plants into chemical building blocks but non-biologicapproaches based on catalysts that enable chemical reactions,such as the one used by Avantium, have also gained traction.($1 = 0.8928 euros) (Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing byGeorgina Prodhan)
