ISCC PLUS sustainability certification for Kuraray

KURARAY POVAL™ and MOWITAL® from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, are verifiably bio-based

Hattersheim, January 14, 2025. Kuraray, the global speciality chemicals company headquartered in Japan, has obtained ISCC PLUS certification (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification) for its two production plants in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The associated audit, which was performed by Berlin-based Control Union, comprised an audit of the products KURARAY POVAL™ (polyvinyl alcohol, PVA/PVOH) and MOWITAL® (polyvinyl butyral resin, PVB resin). ISCC PLUS is a globally recognised voluntary sustainability certificate awarded, among others, for the plastics and chemicals markets. Its aim is to provide clear evidence of the sustainability of all raw materials along the entire value chain of a product. Certification enables Kuraray to meet the growing demand from customers for traceable evidence of the sustainability of KURARAY POVAL™ and MOWITAL®. Customers also benefit because they can use the ISCC PLUS certification to provide the necessary evidence for their own clients.

Rising demand for environmentally friendly products

The reason for certification is obvious: more and more companies are examining the sustainability of their supply chains and demanding corresponding evidence from their business partners – partly so they can provide clear evidence to their own customers. “Some of our customers explicitly ask about ISCC PLUS certification,” explains Dr. Jörg Schappel, Director Safety, Health & Sustainability at Kuraray Europe.

The Green Claims Directive currently under discussion by the EU will also contribute to this trend. This EU Directive sets stringent benchmarks for claims relating to the climate and environmental friendliness. In future, companies will be required to provide traceable evidence to back up such claims. The aim is to ensure that such claims are transparent and verifiable. This will make it easier for consumers to see which products really are environment-friendly. One option for companies to provide such proof is by certifying their products as conforming to ISCC PLUS, currently the leading standard in the chemical industry.

Certified bio-based PVA/PVOH and PVB resin

The certificates issued to Kuraray by Berlin-based Control Union are for KURARAY POVAL™ and MOWITAL® at its Frankfurt site and confirm that these products are bio-based. Kuraray had to satisfy a range of basic preconditions for ISCC PLUS certification of these two products. Mandatory requirements include a Sustainability Declaration, which provides end-to-end evidence of the raw materials used for each product. The second precondition is a complete “chain of custody” for the materials used, applying the mass balance approach. In other words, materials procured by the company from suppliers are also examined as part of the certification process. The mass balance approach helps to calculate and validate the proportion of environmentally friendly substances used in a product, even if bio-based resources are mixed with conventional materials. For example, KURARAY POVAL™ polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH/PVA) based on bio-VAM (vinyl acetate monomer) is produced entirely from cooking oils from the catering sector – and is therefore 100 percent bio-based. MOWITAL® produced from biocircular KURARAY POVAL™ and bio-butyraldehyde is manufactured entirely from bio-based materials as well.

“Since ISCC PLUS is a recognised certification system, it enables us to provide clear evidence that the materials used to produce our products are truly bio-based and therefore sustainable. We are therefore a step ahead of the EU’s Green Claims Directive,” says Dr. Jörg Schappel. He stresses: “We deliberately use biocircular variants rather than bio-based primary raw materials in the production of KURARAY POVAL™ and MOWITAL®, because no company – including us – wants to compete directly with the production of food. Therefore, we only use second or third-generation raw materials, in other words, from plant residues and recycled biological materials.”

Biocircular EVAL™ has had ISCC PLUS certification since 2022

The biocircular variant of EVAL™ also boasts ISCC PLUS certification – since 2022. Kuraray was therefore the first producer of ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymers (EVOH) to receive certification. Certification is based on the mass balance approach and documents that both the ethylene monomer and the vinyl acetate monomer in EVAL™ are produced from renewable resources. In principle, the certificate applies to all EVOH variants produced by Kuraray in Antwerp.

ISCC PLUS certification planned for further products and sites

Kuraray does not intend to certify only these products and sites. On the contrary, the aim is to obtain ISCC PLUS certification stepwise for all Kuraray sites and products worldwide. "Here in Europe, we are starting by focusing on what we can control ourselves,” stresses Dr. Schappel. “Therefore, we are planning to start with the certification of KURARAY POVAL™, MOWITAL® and PVB film and thus to include the Troisdorf and Holešov sites.”

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Established in 1991, Kuraray Europe GmbH is based in Hattersheim, near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In 2022 the company generated annual sales of EUR 1.3 billion.

It has more than 830 employees in Germany at its sites in Hattersheim, Frankfurt and Troisdorf. Kuraray is a global speciality chemicals company and one of the largest suppliers of industrial polymers and synthetic microfibres for many sectors of industry. Examples are Kuraray Poval™, Mowital®, Trosifol® and Clearfil™. Kuraray Europe also has around 215 employees at seven other European sites. They are also working on the development and application of innovative high-performance materials for a wide range of sectors, including the automotive, paper, glass and packaging industries, as well as for architects and dentists.

Kuraray Europe is a wholly owned subsidiary of the publicly listed Kuraray Group, which is based in Tokyo, Japan, and has more than 11,700 employees worldwide and sales of EUR 5.5 billion.

This press release including images is available at: https://www.kuraray.eu