Fanny Liao

Executive Vice President
Far Eastern New Century Corporation

Dr. Fanny Liao obtained her doctoral degree and postdoctoral research experiences from State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY, USA. She has worked for more than 23 years in Far Eastern Group, a conglomerate covering 10 business sectors such as chemicals, textile, cement, retailing, transportations etc. in Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia and USA.  

Dr. Liao has experiences in petrochemical projects, recycled PET operation, medical device business, brewery setup, biotechnology venture capital investments, merger & acquisition, business development and PET/polyester/bioplastics researches.

She is President of Oriental Resources Development Ltd. which produces medical devices and Executive Vice President of RD&BD in Far Eastern New Century(FENC) Corp. who is aiming to petrochemical/renewable/ bio-based chemicals, biomedical materials, sustainable polyester/PET and textile related researches and developments.  She is also in charge of RD Center located in Ohio, USA for barrier PET researches. She is the board directors of Eminent II Venture Capital Fund, Air Liquide Far Eastern, APG Polytech Holding(USA), Oriental Resources Development Ltd., Asia Eastern University of Science and Technology.  

Speech title & Synopsis

The plastic bioeconomy: Bio-based and biologically converted PET/Polyester

Currently plastics and textile materials are mostly made of petrochemical feedstock which creates a lot of carbon footprints, so petrochemical/textile industries are at the top list of heavy carbon emission businesses.  

In order to reduce the carbon footprints, bio-based PET/polyester are under developments besides physical recycling PET bottles and chemical recycling polyester garments.  30% and 100% bio-based PET were made by using biomass instead of petroleum as feedstock.  Bio-based PET could have significant carbon reduction compared to petro-PET.  The world first 100% bio-PET bottle and 100% bio-polyester shirt were made and announced by FENC and partners.  For even further making carbon-negative PET/polyester, the waste gas of the steel mills is used as the feedstock for manufacturing PET, which could fix carbons in the PET/polyester products and could be further recycled.  FENC commercialized waste gas-based polyester garments with the partner LanzaTech for name brands such as lululemon and Zara.  The presentation will cover the approaches of bio-based PET and waste gas-based PET to achieve the net-zero emission bioeconomy.