Finland is to get one of Europe’s flagship biorefineries — and a Swiss engineering company is being trusted to make its many moving parts fit together. Flying Forest has selected Casale, headquartered in Lugano and a member of SPIN, as integrator and technology provider for the Pre-FEED of Project Loonbird, a next-generation biomass-to-methanol complex planned for Iisalmi in eastern Finland. Operations are targeted for 2030.
The design combines two feedstocks that are usually discussed separately: forestry residues and renewable hydrogen from electrolysis. That combination is what makes Loonbird interesting well beyond Finland.
The numbers behind the project
Loonbird is designed to produce roughly 180,000 tonnes of bio-e-methanol per year. The inputs: around 210,000 tonnes of locally sourced, non-recyclable forestry biomass and about 17,000 tonnes of renewable hydrogen generated by water electrolysis running on renewable electricity.
The product is aimed first at shipping, where demand for low-carbon marine fuels is being pulled forward by regulation such as FuelEU Maritime and the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation. The methanol is to be distilled to ISO/DIN 6583:2024 for marine fuel applications and to Methanol Grade AA for conventional chemical markets. In a second development phase, the facility is also intended to produce sustainable aviation fuel — the route that makes fossil-free flying possible without waiting for a new generation of aircraft.
Why adding hydrogen changes the carbon arithmetic
Forestry biomass will be converted into synthesis gas by oxygen-blown gasification, using technology from Sumitomo SHI FW. The raw syngas is then cleaned, treated and conditioned — including CO₂ removal — with technology from Honeywell UOP. So far, this is a conventional biomass-to-methanol chain.
The Power-to-X part comes next. The conditioned syngas is blended with renewable hydrogen from electrolysis. Because that hydrogen supplies the missing element directly, the plant can dispense with CO shift conversion under normal operating conditions — the step in which part of the biomass carbon would otherwise be sacrificed as CO₂ simply to balance the gas composition. Put plainly: more of the carbon that grew in the forest ends up in the fuel instead of in the atmosphere. The electrolysis system is additionally sized to supply oxygen to the gasification and reforming steps, so the by-product of hydrogen production becomes an input elsewhere in the plant.
The gas mixture is then processed in a methanol synthesis section designed by Casale, using a customised version of its BioFlex methanol technology. The electrolyser supplier is still to be chosen from a pool of qualified manufacturers.
Casale’s role: integration, not just licensing
Casale acts as licensor for the methanol synthesis and distillation technologies, but the mandate goes further. The company’s scope covers the biomass yard and feedstock preparation section — developed together with Sumitomo SHI FW — as well as the utilities and offsite systems the complex needs to run. Above all, Casale is responsible for the overall integration of process units, utilities and offsites into one optimised facility.
That is the harder half of the job. Loonbird brings together gasification, gas cleaning, carbon management, large-scale electrolysis and methanol synthesis — four or five technology packages from different suppliers that have to behave as a single plant. Casale’s management points to the company’s experience integrating large electrolysis systems in green ammonia projects as the basis for taking that on; Flying Forest’s team describes the Pre-FEED as a milestone and a blueprint for rolling out comparable circular-economy plants across Europe, working with its project development partner Devaltec.
Why it matters for Power-to-X
Loonbird is a useful counter-example to the idea that Power-to-X and bioenergy compete. Pure e-fuel plants need a CO₂ source and a great deal of electricity. Pure biomass plants are limited by how much sustainable biomass exists. Hybrid plants use biogenic carbon as the carbon source and renewable hydrogen to make that carbon go further — which relieves pressure on both constraints at once. For defossilising shipping and aviation, where the molecules cannot simply be replaced by electrons, that is a pragmatic route to volume before 2030.
There is a Swiss angle too, and it is not the plant — it is the engineering. Switzerland will not build large biorefineries on its own territory; it has neither the biomass nor the sites. What it does have is exactly what Loonbird required: the ability to license synthesis technology and to integrate other people’s process units into a working whole. Casale’s selection is a reminder that Swiss value creation in Power-to-X will often be exported as engineering, licences and integration know-how rather than as fuel.
Source: Casale media release, Lugano, 19 June 2026 (casale.ch).
🤖 AI transparency: This text and its visual were created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human.
Power-to-X Congress Switzerland 2026 — «Reality Check with Net Zero». Join us on 22 September 2026, 10–18h, at the Kursaal Bern. Co-organised by energie-cluster.ch and SPIN, with partner Réseau H2 Suisse Romande. Learn more and register →