US synthetic biotechnology company Amyris has started the commissioning of its new fermentation plant in Barra Bonita, Brazil ahead of full operation by the end of June.
Located next to the Raizen sugar mill, the plant will make bio-based products for the personal care and other industries.
The fermentation plant has a proprietary design with a process tower that is two times taller than the company's prior Brotas plant to take full advantage of gravity in its vertical fermentation process.
The site consists of five fermentation "mini-factories" capable of concurrently producing our more than 13 currently scaled and future bio-fermented products.
“There is strong consumer demand for bio-based products. A real shift is occurring across multiple end-markets, including food and personal care. Biotechnology has seen significant investment over the past years,” Amyris said in a statement.
“However, the majority of the funding has been applied toward the front of the funnel; gene discovery, genetic pathway modeling and microbe engineering. Little investment has been seen downstream in fermentation process development, scale up and fermentation at scale,” it added.
"At Amyris we are taking control of our destiny with the Barra Bonita plant," said CEO and President John Melo (pictured).
"Industry experts are seeing a significant future gap between supply and demand of fermentation-based products.”
