Jun 25 2010
Amyris, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a series of agreements with The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG). These agreements include collaboration terms focused on the use of Amyris’s renewable product farnesene (Biofene(TM)) in certain specialty chemical applications within P&G’s products.
In connection with these collaboration agreements, the parties have also entered into a supply agreement for Biofene which would commence upon successful completion of certain technical and commercial milestones.
“We are very pleased to be working with P&G, a global leader in consumer products,” said John Melo, chief executive officer of Amyris. “These agreements demonstrate the breadth of applications we can access with our technology, and validate the versatility of our first fermentation product, Biofene.”
Amyris applies its industrial synthetic biology platform to produce a broad range of hydrocarbon products. Biofene is the first product that Amyris is seeking to produce at commercial scale. Biofene may be used directly as an ingredient in various industrial and consumer products applications, or it may be modified to provide an even broader range of additional products, such as diesel fuel, industrial and automotive lubricant products, ingredients for the cosmetics and personal care market, as well as other specialty and functional chemicals to replace petroleum-derived products.
In April 2010, Amyris entered into a joint venture with São Martinho, a leading producer of sugar and ethanol, to construct the first commercial scale plant dedicated to the production of Amyris products. Amyris expects production from this plant may be used to provide farnesene for P&G.