Renewable chemicals company Amyris Inc. said it has reached three important milestones with respect to its collaborations and partnerships which include Total SA, Cosan and Biolding Investment SA.
Amyris has received confirmation that Paris-based energy company Total will provide $30 million of funding to Amyris by July 2013, as anticipated in the revised collaboration agreement announced last year. In addition, the two parties intend to form a joint venture company by mid-2013 to market renewable diesel, jet fuel and other specialty products derived from Biofene, Amyris's renewable brand of farnesene.
Amyris and Cosan have entered into definitive agreements to expand their joint venture, Novvi, to include renewable additives and finished lubricants for industrial, commercial and automotive uses in addition to the joint venture's original scope of renewable, base oils for such markets. Amyris plans to supply Biofene to Novvi for finishing into final products until the joint venture builds its own farnesene production capacity.
In addition, Amyris said it has met the technical milestones at its production plant in Brazil to satisfy the conditions for a follow-on common stock investment of $5 million from its existing investor, Biolding Investment SA. The $5 million Amyris received last week represented the final tranche of Biolding's preexisting contractual obligation to fund $15 million upon satisfaction of certain performance conditions at Amyris's Biofene plant.
"Amyris is delivering on a track-record of focused execution and collaboration. We continue to meet or exceed the technical milestones for our collaboration with Total and work closely to commercialize products under the Amyris-Total fuels joint venture," said John Melo, Amyris president and CEO. "With Cosan, we have expanded the scope of our joint venture's product portfolio beyond base oils to a range of industrial, commercial, and automotive additives and lubricants derived from Biofene. And, thanks to the successful performance of our first industrial-scale farnesene production facility in Brazil, we met the conditions for an additional investment from one of our leading stockholders," added Melo.
