Sustainable chemicals company Genomatica has raised an additional $45 million dollars. New investors include VantagePoint Venture Partners, the largest investor in this new round; Bright Capital, the venture arm of RU-COM group, a diversified business group based in Russia; and Waste Management.
In February, Waste Management and Genomatica formed a strategic joint development agreement to research and advance Genomatica’s technology and manufacturing processes to enable production of intermediate and basic chemicals from syngas made from municipal solid waste.(Earlier post.)
All existing investors—Alloy Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mohr Davidow Ventures and TPG Biotech—joined the new round.
The new investment will be used to complete demonstration-scale production and early commercialization plans for Genomatica’s first commercial product, Bio-BDO, a ‘green’ version of 1,4-butanediol (BDO) made from renewable feedstocks rather than oil or natural gas.
BDO, an intermediate chemical with a $4 billion dollar market worldwide, is used to make spandex, automotive plastics, running shoes and more. Successful operation at demonstration scale during 2011 will validate organisms, processes and manufacturing economics, and allow development of the basic engineering package to be used in construction of Genomatica’s first commercial-scale plant, planned for operation in late 2013. The investment will also accelerate the development of additional major chemicals in Genomatica’s product pipeline.
Genomatica has successfully been producing Bio-BDO at pilot scale in 3,000-liter fermentations since the first half of 2010. Genomatica says it has achieved productivity, yield and titer at pilot scale that would allow cost competitiveness with the best petro-based BDO cash costs in the world.
(A hat-tip to Matt!)