It was ten years ago this month that DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products announced the first commercial shipments of a breakthrough biomaterial, bio-based 1,3-propanediol.
Four years later it announced an expansion increasing capacity by 35 per cent at its facility in Loudon, Tennessee. Today with thousands of customers around the globe and products in most major consumer and industrial market segments, DuPont Tate & Lyle celebrates a decade of offering higher-performing ingredients from a petroleum-free, sustainable and renewable source.
“This joint venture started as a revolutionary innovation project that applied the tools of modern biotechnology to make high-performance biomaterials in a much more sustainable way than traditional petro-chemistry,” said Michael Saltzberg, global business director of biomaterials for DuPont. “Its track record of success has inspired the academic and industrial science community around the world to invest in industrial biotech and is a case study of how to successfully innovate in this space.
“Our partnership with DuPont is a great example of bringing the best of two organisations together to create a first to market product and process that continues to demonstrate versatility and functionality in the global marketplace,” said Greg Wenndt, vice president and general manager, industrial starch and bioventures, Tate & Lyle. “We are proud of the success we’ve built together and share our congratulations with our DuPont partners and the DuPont Tate & Lyle teams around the world for achieving a decade of great work and continued innovation.”
By bringing together the track record of DuPont’s research and development with Tate & Lyle’s fermentation expertise, scientists and engineers from this joint venture developed a proprietary process that uses plant-based feedstocks to produce bio-based 1,3-propanediol. Today the joint venture provides solutions for a wide variety of markets and applications through its bio-based performance brands Susterra and Zemea propanediol in addition to Bio-PDO, the key ingredient for DuPont Sorona high-performance polymers.
“We’ve grown past what was previously imagined,” explained Todd Sutton, president, DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products. “The versatility of the product allows us to support the DuPont Sorona fiber business as well as grow organically with Zemea and Susterra propanediol. The benefits of creating high-performing solutions in combination with renewability allows us to continue to expand our market reach in the personal care, food, polyurethanes and heat transfer fluids markets as well as many other applications”
