Hello, everyone. My name is Tom van Aken. I am a CEO of Avantium. Avantium announced the first half 2023 financial results this morning, and in this video, we would like to provide you with more context around what was announced this morning. For exact data, for the exact statements, I kindly refer you to the press release or to the company website. Avantium is a renewable chemistry company. We are focused on sustainable materials, circular materials that are fully renewable. In order to do that, we are developing a range of new technologies. We first develop them at lab scale. Subsequently, we bring them to our pilot plant. We demonstrate the technology on our,
in our flagship plant, in order to make sure that we can provide product to the market, but most importantly, to enable us to sell technology licenses. The long-term business model of the company is to sell and monetize these technologies through a technology licensing model. If I look at our pipeline of products, the most advanced product that we are developing is called PEF. It's a new polymer. It's a new plastic material, 100% renewable, fully circular, and it is really seen as a next generation plastic. PEF is made from two chemical ingredients, FDCA and MEG, and we are the first company in the world that is now commercializing FDCA. For that, we are building a flagship plant in Delfzijl, in the north of the Netherlands.
This morning in our press release, we've provided an update that we are on track with this, with this project. We are planning to start commissioning the plant in Q1 2024, and that's going to be leading up to starting commercial operations in the second half of 2024. Now, this is a project of enormous complexity and, and really large scale, and I can imagine it's, it's hard to get a real feel for how that looks like, so we have recorded a drone video and released it this morning on the company website. You can also compare that with a drone video of March 2023. There you can really see the tremendous progress that we're making in terms of construction, constructing this first-of-a-kind facility.
Moving on to the commercial side, we have so far signed 14 offtake agreements, so we have a very strong commercial basis for operating the flagship plant. In February 2023, we have also announced that we have signed our first technology license agreement by selling this to a company in the United States called Origin Materials, and they're gonna be building the first licensed facility of 100,000 ton FDCA. That means for our customers that they can see already the prospect of much larger volumes of FDCA and PEF becoming available in the near future. This is really important progress on the most, let's say, advanced product that we are having. We've also made progress in our other technologies.
The second technology that we have, are developing is called PlantMEG. PlantMEG is the ingredient you need to make PEF, but also is used to make PET. For PlantMEG, we have secured a grant, a very important grant from the Nationaal Groeifonds here in the Netherlands, and that means that Avantium has conditionally received EUR 53 million for the financing of the construction of the PlantMEG flagship facility. That is really good news, and that's gonna be leading up to an investment decision that we plan for 2025. I look at the, let's say, the third technology in the pipeline that is called Volta, and in Volta, we use electrochemistry to convert CO2 to make chemicals and to make plastics.
Also in this technology, we've made very important commercial as well as technical progress. On the commercial side, we have signed a collaboration agreement with the alumina producer, Norsk Hydro, which is a company in Norway. We've also signed an agreement with SCG, which is a chemical producer in Thailand, and that collaboration is focused on PLGA, which is the second product that or polymer plastic material that Avantium will be commercializing in collaboration with partners such as SCG. PLGA is a product which is gonna be, again, 100% renewable, but there it is also a product that is gonna be fully degradable, biodegradable, which will serve other markets than what we can serve with PEF.
In Volta, we're looking for the next milestone, and that is gonna be a stage-gate decision to demonstrate the technology on pilot scale. This business is basically the technology platform that we have in Avantium is also something that we use in our research and development solutions business. This is a cash flow generating business that we are growing, and also there, we've made important progress in the first half of 2023. Now, a press release of financial results, of course, is predominantly about financial results, and therefore, I'm pleased to hand over to Boudewijn van Schaik, our Chief Financial Officer, who is gonna tell you more about our financial results. Boudewijn?
Thank you very much, Tom. If I look back at our performance over the last 6 months, I think the key message that we would like to bring across to you is that the company is performing very much in line with the expectations that we have set. Taking into consideration that we took the final investment decision in the first half of 2022 to construct the flagship plant, you see that reflected in the comparison between 2023 and 2022. Looking specifically at revenue, we have seen significant growth there, which is driven by the success of our R&D solutions business, as well as the first revenue recognition from the license agreement we entered into with Origin Materials. If I look at our operating expenses, here as well, we see growth, which again, is very much in line with the expectations that we have set.
If I look at the first half of 2023, these figures are very much in line with the results we saw in the second half of 2022. If I look at the CapEx, the funding, and the cash flow, again, these are largely driven by the investments we're making in the flagship plant, and again, very much in line with expectations. Of course, in this respect, the focus is very much on the construction and completion of the flagship plant, but as a company, we need to look beyond that also to the startup, commissioning, and operations of the flagship plant, but also how we are funded as a company going forward. In this regard, we are in discussions with our banks and assessing various options that are available to us.
During our Capital Markets Day, which we've planned for the Q4 of this year, we will give you more details on this, and we very much look forward to seeing you there. Thank you so much for your time today.