Honda R&D Co., Ltd. (“Honda R&D”) announced at The Chemical Society of Japan’s 102nd Spring Annual Meeting on March 23, 2022 that the biomethanol Binex Inc. (“Binex”) is preparing to mass produce was utilized in the 2021 F1 Championship as fuel for the Red Bull-Honda F1 racing cars, of which Honda Motor Company (“Honda”) was a constructor.
The objective of Honda R&D’s research is to promote the use of e-fuel, which is a renewable main ingredient of F1 fuel. Red Bull-Honda used the fuel developed through this research at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Honda driver Max Verstappen won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and became Drivers’ Champion in 2021.
The biomethanol supplied to Honda was developed and manufactured jointly with Honda by Biomass Energy Corporation, one of Binex’s major shareholders. Last year, Biomass Energy Corporation’s biomethanol production division was transferred to Binex, and Binex was granted an exclusive license for biomethanol production and related technologies. Binex will be responsible for the production and sales of biomethanol moving forward.
In preparation for the mass production of biomethanol, Binex began joint research and development related to genome breeding of sorghum varieties optimized for use as biomass for gasification systems with the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences in October 2021. Binex has also begun trial sorghum cultivation on three hectares of land in Peru and plans to secure 5,000 hectares of farmland and begin full-scale cultivation by the end of 2022.
In order to list its operating subsidiary on the Singapore Exchange (“SGX”) Catalist market, Binex entered into a legally binding sale and purchase agreement on January 31, 2022 with Sinjia Land Limited, a SGX listed company. This is expected to result in a reverse takeover.
Through these activities, Binex is truly committed to reducing the Earth’s carbon footprint.