Novozymes Acquires 10% of Beta Renewables for $115M; Companies to Jointly Market, Demonstrate and Guarantee Cellulosic Biofuel Solutions.

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Novozymes becomes preferred enzyme supplier for Beta Renewables’ current and future cellulosic biofuel projects; embedded in Proesa production technology.
In Denmark and Italy, Novozymes, the world’s largest producer of industrial enzymes, and Beta Renewables, a global leader in cellulosic biofuels and part of Gruppo Mossi & Ghisolfi, announced an agreement to jointly market, demonstrate and guarantee cellulosic biofuel solutions.
...Beta Renewables will embed Novozymes’ enzymes in its PROESA technology and guarantee biofuel production costs upon start-up of customers’ cellulosic facilities. The deal is unique in offering a combined solution that reduces the risk in customers’ projects while providing competitive commercial terms.
...The partnership marks the formation of the third major global match-up, via joint venture or equity shares, of cellulosic biofuels technology and an enzyme supplier.
...While the project brings together enzymes and processing technology – feedstock remains outside of the equation, for now. “PROESA’s technology is capable of working with multiple feedstocks,” noted Ghisolfi, “and that reduces feedstock risk – and, as well, addresses the basic problem of trying to sourec 250,000 tons on any single feedstock. In our case, you can use straw in the summer, corn stover in the fall, woods chips or arundo in the winter, for example. That not only reduces the dependency on one feedstock, it allows customers to save on the storage and handling of biomass for an entire year. Plus, with feedstocks such as corn stover that are not kept completely dry, it avoids the problem of losing sugars due to natural fermentation that could occur over long periods of storage.” READ MORE and MORE (TriplePundit)