Billionaire Stan Kroenke owns majority stakes in several professional sports teams, including the Denver Nuggets, St. Louis Rams and Arsenal of the English Premier League. But one of his players might be poised to eclipse his net worth.
Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini revealed that he founded and co-owns a company in Italy, GF Biochemicals, that has become the first firm capable of mass-producing a fossil fuel replacement from wood waste and corn waste called Levulinic acid.
Flamini and a business partner, Pasquale Granata, founded the company while Flamini played for AC Milan and spent the past seven years spending millions to fund research and run trials. The market is worth an estimated 20 billion British pounds.
“I was always close to nature and concerned about environmental issues, climate change and global warming,” Flamini told The Sun of London. “It’s a molecule identified by the US Department of Energy as one of the 12 molecules with the potential to replace petrol in all its forms. We are the first company — and the only one in the world — to produce LA on an industrial scale.”
“To me, it was an escape. A football career is made of ups and downs.
“It cleared my mind and helped me to think about something different. And it was something intellectually challenging too.”
And highly profitable, apparently.
