Waste-to-fuels company Terrabon filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in September. Terrabon CEO Gary Luce said that the firm was “unable to obtain additional funding,” and approximately 60 employees were laid off. The company had a history of missing key milestones, and we flagged this nearly one year ago in our last profile of the company (client registration required.) Two years ago, the company was expecting a $25 million funding (client registration required) round in the first half of 2011.
Terrabon was developing a multi-step process to convert wet waste into drop-in gasoline and jet fuel. The process features bacteria fermentation, pyrolysis, then a catalytic conversion into gasoline. In this multi-step process, yield loss was a significant factor, and Terrabon expected a yield of 70 gallons per ton of dry feedstock, much lower than fellow waste convertors like Enerkem (90 gallon/ton) and Fulcrum (120 gallon/ton). Terrabon, however, was targeting different feedstocks than most other waste convertors, focusing on wet waste. Terrabon focused on a mix of municipal solid waste (MSW), sludge, and biomass, and its feedstock was 30% solids, much lower than that of its competitors.
Among its investors, Waste Management and Valero decided not to give out the big dollars necessary to keep the company afloat and build its first commercial facility. Looking first at Valero’s portfolio, it becomes clear the rocky track record Valero has in this space. First and foremost, Valero is the third largest ethanol producer in the U.S. (client registration required) behind POET and ADM, though recently it idled a 110 MGY facility in Nebraska (client registration required.) Valero also invested in biofuel failure Qteros (client registration required), behind-schedule producers Enerkem and Mascoma, and cellulosic ethanol company ZeaChem. Beyond cellulosic ethanol, Valero is scaling up a renewable diesel facility in a joint venture called Diamond Green Diesel.
Terrabon’s other strategic investor, Waste Management, similarly has several waste-to-fuel companies in its portfolio (client registration required), including Enerkem, Fulcrum, and Agilyx. Most recently, WM invested in pretreatment company Renmatix, capping off its $75 million Series C. While the recent Renmatix investment (and investment in Genomatica before that) shows that WM isn’t pulling out of the fuels space altogether, we do expect to see strategic investors like WM continue to pare down portfolios. This doesn’t mean that strategic investment will go away, or even decrease, just that new companies and technologies may take the place of current investments. Oil giant Shell, for example, significantly downsized its relationships with Iogen and Codexis (client registration required) this year.
Corporate investment in this space boomed in 2007 and 2008, see the report “Hedging Bets with Flexibility in Alternative Fuels” (client registration required), and the partnering web expanded most rapidly in 2008 and 2009, see the report “Mapping Empires, Goldmines, and Landmines in the Alternative Fuels Network” (client registration required.) Over the past four to five years, strategics funded innovation at these start-ups, and now these producers need to perform commercially. Missing technical and project scale milestones won’t cut it anymore, and the corporate parents are kicking their kids out of the house, to sink or swim on their own. Expect to see more relationships falter in this space, but even more form as innovative companies continue to emerge, promising new sources of fuels and novel conversions, and new types of organizations partner their way into the alternative fuels arena.
facebook 
twitter 
email 
linkedin