GF Biochemicals

GFBiochemicals (the company now styles it as one word) grew out of a partnership between Pasquale Granata and Mathieu Flamini, who met in Italy and started the venture in 2008 while Flamini was still playing for AC Milan. The initials come from their surnames. What began as a side project for a footballer became a seven-year research collaboration with the University of Pisa to crack a stubborn problem: making levulinic acid from plant waste at a price that could compete with oil-derived chemicals. The process earned the John Sime Award for Most Innovative New Technology in 2015, and a year later the company bought Segetis, a Minnesota-based bio-chemicals firm, which gave it a US base and a wider patent portfolio.

Production runs from a plant in Caserta, near Naples, with commercial offices in Milan and in the Netherlands. The company sells levulinic acid and its downstream esters, particularly levulinate esters aimed at the CASE market (coatings, adhesives, sealants, elastomers). In March 2025 Brenntag, the large chemical distributor, took on distribution of those esters in Europe, a deal that pushed GFBiochemicals' products into a much wider industrial customer base. The company raised a €15m Series A in May 2022 and has stayed privately held, with no stock listing.

The brand's public profile owes a lot to Flamini's double life. He has given interviews to Politico, the Financial Times and Lombard Odier about decarbonizing heavy industry, and tabloids regularly recycle his personal fortune as a hook. That coverage often blurs his wealth with the company's finances, which are not publicly disclosed. Inside the industry, though, GFBiochemicals is known less for the celebrity angle and more for being one of only a handful of firms, alongside Biofine, producing levulinic acid at commercial scale. [edit]