Industrial biotechnology – also known as white biotechnology – uses enzymes and micro-organisms to make bio-based products in sectors as diverse as chemicals, food and feed, healthcare, detergents, paper and pulp, textiles and bioenergy.

Industrial Biotechnology is a very promising field because of avoiding limited fossil resources as starting materials, but in some instances competing with edible feedstocks. This important issue, specially raised in the case of biofuels, can be solved by the introduction of 2nd generation biofuels using non-edible biomass as a sole feedstock. Besides biofuels, the wide variety of intermediate products that may enter at different stages in different value chains introduces complexity when analyzing biotechnological products. Because of its wide and diverse applications, industrial biotechnology is much more than a sole industrial or even economical sector. Companies manufacturing biotechnological products, such as bio-refineries, have a strong interdisciplinary approach in producing their bio-based products. In fact there is a claim for a bio-based economy.

Industrial or White Biotechnology that can be defined as follows: “Industrial biotech is the application of biotechnology for the industrial processing and production of chemicals, materials and fuels. It includes the practice of using microorganisms or components of micro-organisms like enzymes to generate industrially useful products, substances and chemical building blocks with specific capabilities that conventional petrochemical processes cannot provide.” Industrial biotechnology is mainly characterized by conversion of renewable biomass to products used in the consumer, chemical or energy industries. It could be distinguished from e.g., discovery research in pharma or agrochemicals, chemical transformation of renewable raw materials, biodiesel production from plant products, chemical degradation of organic waste materials.

Bio-based polymers  are one of the important milestones on the white biotechnology's agenda. Over the past 20 years, these efforts have concentrated on polyesters of 3-hydroxyacids (PHAs), polylactic acid (PLA) and other polymeric building blocks such as 1,3-propandiol (1,3 PDO) or polyethylene from bioethanol  which  are  mainly  naturally  synthesized  by  a  wide  range  of  microorganisms.  These compounds  could  have  properties  similar  to  synthetic  plastics  and  elastomers  from  propylene  to rubber, but are completely and rapidly degraded by bacteria in soil or water. A major limitation of the  commercialization  of  such  bio-based  plastics  has  always  been  their  cost  and  performance  in relation to petroleum-based polymers. Much effort has gone into reducing production costs through the  development  of  better  bacterial  strains  and/or  the  use  of  cheaper  feedstocks,  like  food processing byproducts and waste, but recently alternatives emerged, e.g. the modification of plants to synthesize PHAs or the utilization of cellulosic feedstocks. Although  bio-based  polymers  and  plastics  are  still  in  their  infancy,  this  industry  has been characterised by an annual grow rate of almost 50% due to new synergies and collaborations. The global capacity of bio-based polymers was estimated to be 0.36 billion tones in 2007, with an annual growth rate of 48% in Europe and 38% globally, and its market share is expected to be 10-20% by 2020.