Origin Materials, Inc. announced it has begun startup of Origin 1, the world's first commercial CMF plant, located in Sarnia, Ontario, in-line with prior guidance. The new plant will supply industry with intermediate chemicals and materials that can be used across a wide range of end markets, including clothing, textiles, plastics, packaging, car parts, tires, carpeting, toys, fuels, and more with a $1 trillion addressable market. The plant represents a significant scale-up of Origin's technology platform for converting sustainable wood residues into versatile intermediate chemicals.

CMF (chloromethyl furfural) is a versatile chemical building-block that can be used to make numerous downstream products, including para-xylene, which is the precursor to PET plastic, and FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid), which can be used in numerous sustainable products and materials such as the next-gen polymer PEF (polyethylene furanoate). The plant will also produce HTC (hydrothermal carbon), whose applications include sustainable carbon black for automotive tires. Origin 1 will be operated to optimally fulfill customer demand around qualification and sampling.

The plant is expected to play a key role in the development of higher-value products and applications for CMF, HTC, and other co- products. These higher value products are expected to be produced and sold at world-scale from future plants, including Origin 2, Origin 3, and potentially licensed plants.