Australian biochemicals company Circa Group AS has successfully completed a private placement of 575 Norwegian Kroner (NOK) – approximately €56 million – in a transaction led by Pareto Securities and Sparebank 1 Markets in Oslo, at a post-money market valuation of approximately NOK 2 billion (approximately €194 million). The company (ticker code: CIRCA) shares started trading on Euronext Growth Oslo at 09:00 CET yesterday (2 March 2021).
“It is in everyone’s interests for life-sustaining chemicals to be manufactured both safely and reliably. We would argue that it is also extremely important that those chemicals be as sustainable as possible, so that future generations will have a habitable plant to use them on.” Jason Camp, CTO at Circa Group, talks to Il Bioeconomista. The Australia-based company is converting waste biomass into advanced biochemical materials.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
“We are hoping that the next US government will take climate change seriously and will take material steps to improve its leadership on the global stage.”
To say it – in this exclusive interview with Il Bioeconomista – is Matt Lipscomb, CEO of DMC Bio, the US company which is producing bio-based chemicals using fermentation.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
Amyris, Inc., a leading synthetic biotechnology company in Clean Health and Beauty markets and IDRI (Infectious Disease Research Institute) signed a binding term sheet for a planned COVID-19 RNA (ribonucleic acid) vaccine technology program. The program combines IDRI’s expertise in combating infectious diseases with Amyris’ fermentation platform technology, with the goal to create semi-synthetic squalene-based adjuvants at scale.
In response to the growing importance of bio-based renewable raw materials, manufacturers of biomass-derived chemicals created a new sector group within the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic): Biomass-derived Chemicals Europe (BioChem Europe). The group represents companies using feedstocks based on biomass as their raw materials to produce chemicals.
A new demo plant in Örnsköldsvik will be the first in the world to produce a 2G platform for sustainable fuels, chemicals and materials, coined GOLDILOCKS®, from pulp and paper industry residues. The plant will be built by the Swedish chemical and clean tech company Sekab together with the Dutch oil company Vertoro.
Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living, Sabic, a global leader in the chemical industry, and UPM Biofuels, a leading producer of sustainable raw materials, signed a partnership that will help to reduce the environmental footprint of Dyneema®, the world’s strongest fiber. The collaboration will see Dyneema® transition to bio-based feedstock leveraging SABIC’s ground-breaking TRUCIRCLETM solutions for certified renewable products. As such, DSM is delivering on its commitment to improve the sustainability footprint of Dyneema®, moving towards a circular, bio-based economy.
Thailandese bio-based chemical company Advanced Biochemical Co., Ltd. announced a capacity increase at its plant in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, which will now produce 120,000 mt/year of bio-based epichlorohydrin (ECH) – an increase of 20,000 mt/year. Permission for this increase was granted by the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand.
DMC Biotechnologies, the US BioBased specialty chemical company, has successfully produced its lead product, L-alanine at pilot scale. Commercial key performance metrics were achieved and performance from the bench scale was also demonstrated at 3m3scale fermentation and for each of the downstream purification unit operations. The robustness of DMC’s Dynamic Metabolic Control technology to the process environment was also validated.
Finnish company UPM takes the next transformative growth step and enters the biochemicals business by investing in a biorefinery at Leuna, Germany. The biorefinery will produce a range of 100% wood-based biochemicals which enable a switch from fossil raw materials to sustainable alternatives in various consumer-driven end-uses. The investment opens totally new markets for UPM with large growth potential for the future.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 