The world's largest wood-to-chemicals plant is open — and it runs on sawmill leftovers

At Leuna in Germany, a factory the size of a small town has started turning leftovers into the stuff of everyday life. UPM's new biorefinery — an investment of €1.37 billion (about $1.6 billion) and, at 220,000 tonnes a year, the largest of its kind in the world — takes beechwood from forest thinnings and sawmill residues gathered within about 200 kilometres, wood too poor for timber or furniture, and converts it into industrial sugars and lignin. Those renewable chemicals head into clothing, packaging, cosmetics, building materials and tyres — jobs long done by fossil-based raw materials. The core production lines have reached stable operation. UPM's president Massimo Reynaudo called Leuna 'a transformative investment' and a milestone for Europe's bioeconomy: proof, at full commercial scale, that chemistry's future can be grown as well as drilled.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: infrastructure build