ARD: Our Research and Biotechnology business
Both a project incubator and an innovation accelerator, ARD (Agro Industrie Recherches & Développements) specialises in industrial biotechnology, fractionation and plant chemistry.
What is ARD’s business?
Located in the heart of the Grand-Est region, we promote plant-based resources to create value from the entire plant through new bioprocesses and molecules for food industry and non-food applications. We also work on a variety of sustainable agricultural solutions – such as bio-inputs – for the Cooperative farmers that oversaw our creation.
ARD is an active player in the globally oriented competitive cluster “Industrie et Agro-Ressources”. This competitive cluster with a global reach is devoted to bio-sourced products and bio-refining. This cluster is a flat innovation structure that brings together players from research, higher education and industry from the Champagne-Ardenne and Picardie regions to work on a shared goal: the bio-economy.
Industrial biotechnologies: leading expertise and facilities
Because all its equipment is on the same site, ARD can accelerate the scale-up of production processes while optimising costs. From the laboratory to the BioDemo industrial demonstrator, ARD covers every step on the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) scale, which measures a project’s technological maturity. Because all its equipment is on the same site, ARD can accelerate the scale-up of production processes while optimising costs. Thanks to our capacity for contract manufacturing for the biotechnology industry, and this sector’s growth, we work with American, European and French start-ups as well as large group specialising in food ingredients and cosmetics.
In the service of the environment and sustainable agriculture
Providing agricultural cooperatives with better farming solutions is part of our purpose. We are conducting several research programmes on bio-inputs, financed by the Grand Est region and the European Union (Feder), with a regional, national and international scope.
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1Mtonnes of wheat processed per year with ARD processes
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6,400 M2dedicated to pilot techniques and the demonstrator
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80patents registered in 20 years
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112employees
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2,800 m²of laboratory space
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300jobs created in Pomacle in the last 10 years
Detergents, food ingredients and cosmetics
Our site is located in the heart of the European Bio-refinery Institute which brings together major players from agriculture, industry and research. The various teams work in synergy: this complex is the only one of its kind in Europe and is a model of a flat innovation structure and one of the largest bio-refineries in the world: it processes more than 3 million tonnes of biomass every year to produce sugar, glucose, starch, food-grade or pharmaceutical alcohol, fuel ethanol, and active ingredients for cosmetics. On these markets, which are increasingly looking for bio-sourced solutions, our subsidiary WHEATOLEO continues to widen its product range to further accelerate its future growth in detergents.
Did you know?
In 1997, to provide their financial support to innovation, several grain cooperatives in Champagne-Ardenne joined forces within a union called Céréales Recherche & Développement (CRD) and thus took a stake in ARD.
