Avioxx at the World Aviation Festival 2025: Engineering the Future of Sustainable Flight
By Myfanwy Fleming-Jones
This October, Avioxx joined more than 4,500 aviation leaders, innovators, and investors in Lisbon for the World Aviation Festival 2025, a global showcase of new thinking across the aviation ecosystem.
With over 400 exhibitors, 600 speakers, and a programme spanning 16 conference tracks, this year’s event explored the future of flight from multiple vantage points: passenger experience, digital transformation - and, perhaps to a lesser extent - sustainability.
That made Avioxx’s presence all the more significant. While the spotlight was elsewhere, we came with a clear message: Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is real, scalable, and already in motion, not just on paper.
Demonstrating the System, Not Just the Ambition
In a hall filled with dashboards, digital platforms, and passenger interfaces, we presented real-time remote access to our reactor control interface, the real thing: a live operating system designed to transform non-recyclable waste into Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
The centrepiece of our stand was a live demonstration of the Avioxx SAF production dashboard, visualising real-time data from our pilot facility. Attendees could explore process flows, gas compositions, temperature and pressure readings, and integrated control logic.
This wasn’t a rendering or a marketing tool. It was the same dashboard we use in Runcorn to monitor our pilot operations, offering transparency, traceability, and operator-ready control.
Conversations That Shaped the Dialogue
Throughout the three-day event, we met with decision-makers across the fuel, technology, investment, and airline sectors, and heard recurring themes around the complexity of SAF adoption and the demand for credible delivery.
We listened to Maximiliaan Sabbe of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, who spoke about the firm’s newly launched $1.65 billion sustainability fund, aimed squarely at hard-tech infrastructure. He highlighted the need for climate-critical systems that aren’t just clean, but financeable and scalable. It reinforced Avioxx’s approach: systems that perform, not just promise.
In a standout session titled “How are we financing and scaling real, measurable sustainability in aviation right now?” Nichola Bates - CEO of XeleratedFifty and part of Boeing’s Aerospace Xelerated venture incubator, stressed the importance of cross-sector collaboration. SAF, she argued, won’t scale through siloed efforts or one-off pilots. Her comments closely mirrored Avioxx’s strategy of building deep partnerships with airlines, EPCs, funders, and technology vendors.
We also connected with Glenn Morgan, now a partner at SkiesFifty, who spoke about the convergence of digital infrastructure and fuel innovation. His long-standing experience in digital transformation added weight to our conviction that SAF solutions must be integrated into the operational and data fabric of aviation, not layered on top as compliance exercises.
Additional conversations with leaders from Alaska Airlines, IAGi Ventures, Oneworld Alliance, SHIFT Invest, Honeywell, and the SAF Registry consistently pointed to the same underlying demand: systems that can deliver verified carbon savings, cost transparency, and credible supply.
Reframing SAF at the Festival
The event included notable contributions from speakers such as Faith Taylor, Chief Sustainability Officer at Kyndryl, who challenged the sector to build with integrity and long-term vision. In another panel, Jonathon Counsell, Group Sustainability Officer, reinforced that while SAF supply could technically meet demand, the cost premium, still nearly three times that of fossil jet fuel, remains a barrier.
Avioxx is addressing that head-on. By engineering a self-powered process that leverages waste feedstocks and internal energy loops, we are driving down the cost curve while eliminating reliance on external electricity, positioning us for long-term cost competitiveness.
From Waste to Molecule, and to Market
The future of aviation fuel won’t be grown, mined, or offset. It will be built.
Avioxx’s 32,000 tonne-per-year SAF plant, will convert over 300,000 tonnes of waste per year into sustainable aviation fuel, e-diesel, and e-gasoline, while capturing CO₂ and avoiding landfill and incineration emissions.
We are not adapting existing refineries. We are engineering something purpose-built: modular, circular, and digitally operable. The goal is not to blend in. The goal is to transform.
A Closing Thought
In the words of Dick Benschop, Chair of the Mission Possible Partnership:
“Who knows that every flight they are sitting on already includes 2% SAF? It’s happening, but people seem unaware.”
At Avioxx, we believe that needs to change, and that greater transparency, public understanding, and delivery-led leadership are essential to scale.
We left Lisbon with confidence, not because SAF had dominated the agenda, but because it hadn’t. In a room where everyone was asking how to meet climate goals, we were able to show how.