Founded in 2017, the Andalusian small-to-medium enterprise Catalyxx has developed proprietary technology capable of transforming bioethanol into butanol, hexanol, octanol, and other renewable chemicals. These compounds are used in industries as diverse as cosmetics, paints, adhesives, lubricants, and plastics, and until now they have been produced mainly from fossil feedstocks. Their technology enables replacing them with chemically equivalent alternatives that are cost-competitive and compatible with existing industrial processes.
After years of research and validation at its demonstration plant in La Rinconada, Seville, the company is now preparing the final leap to industrial scale. Catalyxx will build in Sines its first commercial plant, a €120 million project recognized by the Portuguese government as a Project of National Interest. The installation could avoid around 105,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year and will be the starting point of its international expansion. To learn more about this project, we spoke with Joaquín Alarcón, CEO and founder of the company.
MuyPymes: After more than 20 years working in bioenergy and having spent time at a company like Abengoa, what led you to take the leap and become an entrepreneur with Catalyxx?
Joaquín Alarcón: It wasn’t so much a decision to become an entrepreneur as the conviction that we had a technology with enormous industrial potential that deserved continued development. During my time at Abengoa Bioenergy I led the development of this platform and could see its possibilities very early. After leaving Abengoa, I decided that I wanted to launch my own company and become my own boss.
So, in 2017 I founded Catalyxx and began conversations with Abengoa to acquire the rights to the technology. After many years working in bioenergy and developing international industrial projects, I knew the challenges this would entail well. But I also knew that if we could produce the same chemicals that today’s industry uses from a renewable feedstock and do it competitively, there was a tremendous opportunity.
MuyPymes: Your proposition, put simply, is to manufacture chemicals that today come from oil starting from bioethanol. How would you explain to a businessperson who is not in the chemical sector what is disruptive about this model?
Joaquín Alarcón: The simplest way to put it is that we’re not asking the industry to change the products it uses, but to change the way they are produced.
Products like butanol, hexanol, and octanol have decades of history being produced mainly from fossil feedstocks and are used in paints, adhesives, lubricants, cosmetics, detergents, and many other applications. We start from bioethanol, a renewable feedstock with global availability, and through a catalytic process we produce those same molecules.
That carries a fundamental advantage: the customer does not need to redesign their product, alter their facilities, or accept any drop in performance. They can use a chemically equivalent product, but sourced from renewable carbon and with a much lower carbon footprint. And, above all, our ambition has always been to keep it economically competitive. Sustainability is essential, but to truly transform an industry the solution must also work financially.
MuyPymes: One of the big challenges of industrial innovation is moving from lab results to market. What has been harder for you: developing the technology, proving it works at scale, or convincing the market to adopt it?
Joaquín Alarcón: Probably demonstrating that a technology that works in the laboratory can become a stable, efficient, and competitive industrial process. A chemical reaction can be scientifically outstanding and yet have no industrial viability.
The real work begins when you have to demonstrate continuous operation, catalyst stability, yields, product quality, energy efficiency, product separation, safety, and, finally, process economics. That’s why we have progressed in stages and accumulated data over years at our demonstration plant in La Rinconada (Seville).
The market is demanding, as it should be. A large chemical company does not change a critical feedstock simply because a technology is interesting or sustainable. It needs guarantees of quality, availability, price, and supply reliability. That is precisely why industrial validation is so important: it gradually reduces each of those risks.
MuyPymes: Catalyxx has spent years validating its technology in La Rinconada. What mistakes, pivots, or learnings have you had during that process that were not foreseen when the company was founded?
Joaquín Alarcón: One of the big lessons is that industrializing a technology is far more than scaling up a chemical reaction. In the early stages the focus inevitably centers on the catalyst, the conversion, or the selectivity. When you start operating at a larger scale you discover that success also depends on how you thermally integrate the process, how you separate the products, how you maintain stability during long runs or how you achieve consistent specifications.
We’ve had to revise hypotheses, adjust configurations, and learn a great deal from real-world operation. And that is exactly what a demonstration plant is for. It would be concerning to build such a facility and learn nothing from it.
La Rinconada has allowed us to turn scientific knowledge into industrial know-how. Today we not only know that the chemistry works; we have operating data and a team that has learned to run and scale the process. That knowledge is probably as valuable as the technology itself.
MuyPymes: Now you face a massive jump: moving from a demonstration plant to an industrial facility of about €120 million in Sines. How do you manage growth of that magnitude as an entrepreneur without losing control of the company?
Joaquín Alarcón: The first thing is to understand that maintaining control doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. In a project of this scale it would be a mistake. It means being very clear where the company’s value lies, which strategic decisions you cannot delegate, and whom you should surround yourself with to execute the rest.
Nuestro principal activo es la tecnología, el conocimiento acumulado durante todos estos años y nuestra capacidad para seguir desarrollándola. Para construir una instalación industrial hace falta, además, ingeniería de primer nivel, financiación, proveedores, construcción, operación, seguridad, logística y muchas otras capacidades.
That is why building an organization and a project structure that fit, bringing in excellent partners, and establishing rigorous governance are essential. The leap is enormous in terms of investment, but should be much less abrupt in terms of risk because we have spent years preparing for this moment and have the experience of having done this before.
MuyPymes: Financing is one of the biggest hurdles for any innovative company, and especially in industry. How do you persuade investors and public entities to fund a technology that demands years and tens of millions of euros before reaching commercial scale?
Joaquín Alarcón: With evidence. In industry you cannot fund a story for ten years—you have to fund a sequence of milestones.
Cascade by cascade, each stage should help eliminate part of the risk: first demonstrate the chemistry, then the catalyst, then the process, then continuous operation, product quality, economics, market interest, and finally the ability to build a commercial plant.
As you mitigate risks, the type of capital you can access also evolves. In the early stages you need capital willing to bear technology risk. Then come public innovation programs, industrial investors, and, when the project matures, debt and infrastructure financing.
That is why it is so important to combine private investment, public funding, and industrial partners. But no public agency or professional investor funds a project merely because it is sustainable. You have to demonstrate that behind it there is intellectual property, a competitive edge, a real market, a validated technology, and a project capable of delivering profitability. Sustainability multiplies the appeal of a good technology; it does not replace a solid business case.
