We are an industrial biotechnology company producing renewable chemicals. Our
proprietary technology platform combines industrial biotechnology and chemical
catalysis to convert bio-based feedstocks into renewable chemicals that are
cost-competitive replacements for petroleum-derived chemicals used in a wide
variety of everyday products including plastics, resins, paints, food additives
and personal care products. We currently sell our first product, bio-succinic
acid, to customers in a variety of chemical markets. We produce bio-succinic
acid at our facility in Sarnia, Ontario, pursuant to a joint venture agreement
with Mitsui.
Succinic acid can be used to manufacture a wide variety of products used every
day, including plastics, food additives and personal care products, and can
also be used as a building block for a number of derivative chemicals. We believe
that our low-cost production capability and our development of bio-succinic
derived products including BDO and THF, which are used to produce polyesters,
plastics, spandex and other products, will provide us with access to what we
estimate to be an approximately $8 billion market opportunity.
We are working to expand our accessible markets and product portfolio. We have
entered into strategic relationships with several leading companies, such as
our multi-year agreements with PTTMCC Biochem for bio-succinic acid and Vinmar
for bio-succinic acid, BDO and THF. We have also entered into agreements with
other companies for the supply of bio-succinic acid.
We have entered into technology partnerships to lower our production costs,
expand our product portfolio and broaden our biochemical production platform.
For example, we entered into a technology partnership with Cargill through which
we exclusively license a proprietary yeast organism for use in our fermentation
process to produce our products. We refer to the yeast organism that we have
licensed from Cargill as “our yeast.” We have also established other
technology licenses and collaborations, including with Davy for the conversion
of our succinic acid into BDO and THF.
Our business strategy is to leverage the value of our technology by building
and operating production facilities around the world. Depending on our access
to capital and third-party demand for our technology, we may also enter into
technology licenses on an opportunistic basis.
We have entered into a joint venture agreement with Mitsui for our facility
in Sarnia, Ontario, which has a nameplate capacity of 30,000 MT of bio-succinic
acid per year. We started commercial scale production at our Sarnia facility
in October 2015 and ramp-up to full production capacity is expected by 2018.
We are committed to managing our economic, social, environmental and ethical
performance through sustainable business practices. We have completed a life
cycle analysis for our facility in Sarnia, Ontario that indicates that no net
carbon dioxide equivalent (greenhouse gases) is emitted per kilogram of our
bio-succinic acid produced, making our process carbon neutral. This is significantly
less carbon emission intensive than the current petrochemical process for making
succinic acid, in which 7.1 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent are emitted
per kilogram of succinic acid produced. This represents a 100% reduction in
greenhouse gases for our bio-succinic acid process, relative to the current
petrochemical process for making succinic acid. The life cycle analysis also
indicates that our facility in Sarnia consumes 64% less energy than the current
petrochemical process.
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