Tag Archives: Avantium

Industry Giants Join Forces to Fast Track the Commercialization of 100% Bio-Based PET

Posted on by

Last week, industry giants Coca-Cola, Ford Motor, Heinz, Nike, and Proctor & Gamble formed a partnership agreement designed to integrate 100% plant-based polyethylene terepthalate (PET) into their product lines at commercial scale. This news rides on the coattails of Coca-Cola’s announcement to partner with Virent, Gevo (Client registration required.), and Avantium (Client registration required.) to accelerate development of their current 30% plant-based monoethylene glycol (MEG) PlantBottle (Client registration required.). To date, purely bio-based PET technologies exist. In fact, there are many plant-based routes to terepthalic acid (TPA), which can then be converted to PET. These include both fermentation and catalytic processes that are currently too expensive at commercial scale.

Coca-Cola’s goal is to convert all petroleum-based PET products to plant-based PET, which represents 52% of the total packaging within the company. Heinz licensed the MEG PlantBottle technology from Coca-Cola, and hopes to achieve similar goals. Furthermore, Ford shifted from using petroleum-based PET to currently use 25% soy-based polyols for seat cushions, recycled resins for underbody systems, post-industrial recycled yarns for seat fabrics, and repurposed nylon to make cylinder head covers in its bio-based portfolio. Considered a drop-in solution, bio-based PET replicates the mechanical and chemical properties of petroleum-based PET. Therefore, the 100% plant-based PET can potentially be used for all of these end products.

This consortium acts as a catalyst to grow the bio-based PET industry to produce plastic bottles, clothing, shoes, automotive carpets, and other furnishings, and essentially any product made from traditional PET. These industry behemoths will inevitably commercialize the technology due to their current R&D partnerships, access to suppliers, collaborations with universities, and extensive monetary resources. Furthermore, this will enhance the strength of the bio-based materials and chemicals industry by promoting collaboration along the entire supply chain, especially as the rate of forged partnerships is expected to slow in 2012. (See the report “Solving the Bio-Based Chemicals Partnership Puzzle.” Client registration required.)

Share this
Facebook facebook   Twitter twitter   Email email   Linkedin linkedin  

Rating Thermochemical Start-ups on the Lux Innovation Grid

Posted on by

Small technology startups are driving a wave of new bio-based chemicals and materials technologies, and their growth is catalyzing the biggest change the global chemicals industry has seen in decades. In a recent report (client registration required), Lux Research applied its Lux Innovation Grid to rate 106 startups competing in seven technology areas, ranging from renewable feedstocks like algae, GM crops, and waste gases, to downstream processing in pyrolysis, gasification, and synthetic biology.

This week’s graphic displays the likely winners and losers who are fielding thermochemical processes, which promise the bounty of bioprocessing without the need for engineered microbugs. Unlike bioprocessing, thermochemical technologies create compounds via more scalable catalytic and conventional chemical methods. The Dominant quadrant’s five innovators make the field one of the strongest in the bio-based chemicals and materials space.

Among the top innovators is Elevance, which uses metathesis to convert plant oils into glycerin, esters, and biofuels. Its high Technical score derives from its simple chemical process and capital-light manufacturing, which combine to yield a disruptive process. But Elevance also has ongoing collaborations with Cargill, Materia, Dow Corning, Tetramer Technologies, Stepan, Wilmar International, and others, all of which fueled the company’s $100 million IPO filing.

Also in the Dominant quadrant is Virent, which develops fuels and chemicals from soluble sugars. It rates highly on Business Execution because of its management team’s industrial and scientific backgrounds and investments from Cargill, Honda, and Shell. Moreover, the company has a partnership with HCL Cleantech, which supplies cellulosic sugars. Its technology signifies a unique and effective way to convert sugars to alkanes that may then be catalytically converted to a slew of materials (client registration required).

Both Red Lion Bio-energy and Siluria occupy the High Potential quadrant, but that’s about all the two companies have in common. Red Lion, whose process combines aspects of pyrolysis and gasification to convert biomass to syngas, faces business challenges because its gasification technologies are capital-intensive. Meanwhile, Siluria Technologies has a unique catalyst support technology designed to efficiently convert natural gas (fossil or biogas) to ethylene. While its approach is notable and potentially very valuable, the company is only in its fourth year and has not made much commercial progress yet. It has raised about $17 million in venture funding to date, but it lacks chemical industry connections through management experience or partnerships.

Source: Lux Research report “Assessing Innovator Evolution in Renewable Materials and Chemicals.”

Share this
Facebook facebook   Twitter twitter   Email email   Linkedin linkedin  

The boom in bio-based materials and chemicals is really a boom in synthetic biology

Posted on by

Venture capitalists (VCs) invested $3.1 billion in bio-based chemicals and materials developers since 2004. As many of those start-ups reach megaton scales and launch IPOs, Lux Research analysts sought to find which technologies venture investors favored. This week’s graphic comes from their just published report (client registration required), in which analysts tracked 177 venture transactions involving 79 companies operating in five technology categories – biocomposites, bioprocessing, thermochemical processes, crop modification, and algae. In short, they found:

Bioprocessing developers brewed up $1.89 billion in 96 deals. Bioprocessing developers – especially synthetic biology companies – landed more than half the total venture capital invested since 2004. Encompassing technologies like fermentation, phage display, natural breeding and synthetic biology, all bioprocessing platforms employ some sort of organism as a “factory” for creating products as diverse as sweeteners and catalyst supports. Intrinsically flexible, these platforms enable the likes of Amyris, Codexis, LS9, and Solazyme to produce multiple products from multiple feedstocks, thus ensuring a relatively low-cost route to high-value compounds and providing a hedge against feedstock and product price volatility.

Thermochemical technologies raked in $577.0 million in 31 deals. Thermochemical processing encompasses technologies like gasification (Enerkem), catalysis (Avantium, Inventure), and acid hydrolysis (HCL Cleantech, BlueFire) that sometimes convert biomass to an intermediate like sugars or syngas, and sometimes go all the way to an end product. (e.g. Virent’s paraxylene is used in Pepsi’s famed 100% bio-based PET bottle

Crop modification companies harvested $371.7 million in 28 deals. IPOs are less common fates for crop modification companies which, as you may have guessed, modify crops to be more amenable and economical for use in bio-based materials and chemicals. Instead, companies in this category, like Athenix and FuturaGene, usually end up being acquired by the likes of Syngenta, Monsanto, DowAgro, or Bayer CropScience.

Algae developers saw $190.5 million in 13 deals. Notably, that figure only encompasses start-ups developing algae strains, cultivation systems, and processing equipment for creating industrial chemicals. Representative developers include Bio Architecture Lab, a macroalgae developer, and Israel’s Rosetta Green, which had raised $1.5 million in venture funds, but more recently brought in almost $6 million in an IPO on the Tel Aviv TASE. Excluded from this category are companies primarily developing fuels (which we cover in our Alternative Fuels Intelligence service), and companies like Solazyme and Green Pacific Biologicals that use algae for fermentation (and, thus, are categorized in bioprocessing, above).

Biocomposites developers brought in $108.9 million in a mere nine transactions. This category includes bioplastic blends, some starch plastics, and bio-based foams, from the likes of Cereplast, EcoSynthetix, Ecovative Design, and Entropy Resins. Because of the relatively simple nature of these technologies, VCs often don’t see them as investment opportunities – forcing companies like SoyWorks and Biop Biopolymer to find other sources of funding.

Source: Lux Research report “Seeding Investment in the Next Crop of Bio-Based Materials and Chemicals.”

Share this
Facebook facebook   Twitter twitter   Email email   Linkedin linkedin  

The Lux Top 10: Q3′ 11

Posted on by

In the third quarter of 2011, Lux Research analysts profiled 286 companies in 11 different emerging technology sectors. Here are the 10 they thought were the most compelling. Some are already enjoying great commercial success, and should continue to do so. Others are promising upstarts that could yet fail but have the potential to achieve great things. Let us know your thoughts and watch this space for the next quarter’s results.

1. Semprius – Positive – Solar systems

If the company can maintain high yields in automated mass manufacturing, it will have the market’s most attractive high-concentration PV module.

2. Qingdao Institute of Bio-energy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences – Positive – China Innovation, Alternative Fuels

With multinationals such as Boeing and Shell undertaking joint research partnerships, Qingdao has emerged as a leading Chinese institute in alternative fuel technologies.

3. Ice Energy – Positive – Green Buildings

As a complete solution provider of ice-based thermal storage systems for peak-demand load shifting, Ice Energy has secured valuable channels to market via partnerships with Trane and Carrier.

4. Oxis Energy – Wait and See – Electric Vehicles

Although still too early in development to declare success, next-generation energy storage solutions are potentially disruptive in the transportation market, and UK-based Oxis Energy could be one of the first to reach market with its lithium-sulfur battery.

5. Aerogen Therapeutics – Strong Positive – Targeted Delivery

Aerogen is targeting both health and consumer applications, as well as the medical device market, with a versatile electronic micropump technology that aerosolizes liquid drug formulations.

6. Modumetal – Strong positive – Advanced Materials

This leading developer of electroplated metal coatings has shown great savvy in procuring high-profile customers and partners across the aerospace/defense, automotive, and oil and gas industries, despite long development lead times.

7. Sensus – Strong Positive – Smart Grid

A dominating player in the North American advanced metering infrastructure market that spans the entire value chain.

8. Breivoll Inspection Technologies – Wait-and-see – Water

Technology adoption in the $20 billion water infrastructure repair market is notoriously slow, but is inspiring innovations from the likes of Breivoll, which has developed a nondestructive metal water pipe profiling to locate and fix water system weak points before they cause blowouts.

9. E-Ink – Strong Positive – Printed Electronics

Having captured most of the market for e-reader displays with its electrophoretic film technology, E-Ink is looking to other applications as the leisure e-reader market saturates.

10. Avantium – Positive – Bio-based Materials and Components

With its novel furanic platform, Avantium is pushing towards the polyester markets and fanning the flames of the drop-in versus novel chemical debate.

Share this
Facebook facebook   Twitter twitter   Email email   Linkedin linkedin