The Principles of Low-Carbon Tectonics: As Lygos, Pyran Accelerate, We Look at the Why, the Where, and the When

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... Lygos and CJ BIO have signed an MOU to develop a commercial-scale biorefinery complex in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Meanwhile, Pyran raised a new financing round aimed at completing the front-end engineering design for their first commercial. ... Lots of evidence here for the Principles of Low-Carbon Tectonics comes, from Pyran which closed its latest round of fundraising, which includes a $3 million investment from the lead investor, Kowa. Pyran’s Series B equity funding round raised over $5 million with investor support from Kowa and long-term investors such as the venture arm of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and Arosa Capital.

The project. Think 20-thousands tons, a cost ranging from %70-100 million, and commissioning by the end of 2027. Think debt/equity, and a loan guarantee may be in the mix. Now, hexanediol and bio butanediol plants are in the 30-70-thousand tons range — so, a little smaller. Think here of a balancing act between getting to economies of scale without blowing out the capital ask.

Project location. Chalk up another win for the Gulf Coast, several sites under consideration. Access to infrastructure, brownfields, shipping and feedstocks (Pyran’s process requires furfural, traditionally made in the US from corn cobs, but now other feedstocks are in the mix, from cane to woody biomass.

Engineering. Front-end engineering design is almost complete, and the company now is engaged in the selection of contractor firms for the plant.

Tolling campaigns. The company has been doing contract manufacturing with tollers, to support product samples back when and sales at present. That will continue as the company ramps up to its 20-thousand ton plant. “We have customers that are really quite interested in product, and so we need to be able to toll at 1000s of tons, and in order to basically build that market interest, and they’re interested in, for example, setting up a bio based brands of their products, and so that all requires a kind of growing flow of material. So we’ll start with maybe five tons, 10 tons of a product that will grow to then orders around probably 100 of tons from several customers,” Mel Luetkens explained.

Product registration. Pyran has e completion of registration in Europe and there’s ongoing work in the UK.

Kowa partnership. Yes, there’s capital, but also this is a key distributor for the important Asian markets for Pyran, so mark it as a strategic investor, not just financial. “Kowa works very closely with one of our largest customers in Japan,” Kevin Barnett added. “They’re in the polycarbonate dials business. So through that relationship and through product sampling, and the success of product sampling in that market, we were introduced to Kowa and the relationship evolved pretty quickly. They do have an American holding company, but we’ve also developed a relationship with the headquarter team in Japan.”

Goals this season. As Mel Luetkens expressed it, strategic partners are a key. “Strategics in polymers, essentially, large chemical companies, certainly are of interest, They generally have engineering capabilities, deep expertise and HSE engineering expertise, access brownfield sites, and downstream customers. Also, feedstock owners. We have distribution covered with Kowa, but we are looking for strategics in those other aspects.”

Opportunities down the line? “It’d be great for us to work with somebody in the diamine business and produces c5 diamine. We know that Cathay Bio certainly is taking amino acids and converting the diamines. That’s an expensive process. We believe we have a much better process that gets you into the nylon markets.”

The Pyran backstory

We first reported on Pyran back in 2020 for a small grant here – and we picked up on the story with a Competitive Edge Q&A here: The company was on the ABLC stage back in 2021, more on that here,. Things really got moving last year when we reported in “Sun Diol” that Pyran had broken through on a cost-advantaged biobased alternative to pentanediol.

But it goes back even deeper into the misty dawn of industrial biotech. Here’s the original project on production of diols from biomass that was led by the eventual co-founders of Pyran, when Kevin Barnett was a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin and Kefeng Huang was a post-doc.

The biorefinery complex, a series of facilities that use sustainable feedstock to create high value chemicals and materials, will utilize infrastructure and capabilities from CJ’s existing site, and Lygos will develop additional facilities and downstream operations for the production of its products. Lygos plans to break ground in 2025 and be operational by the end of 2027.

The Lygos backstory

We first reported on Lygos when it was first spun out of JBEI in 2012, in “I Want a New Bug”. here. We added more in Death Valley Days: The Bioeconomy Financing Saga later that year, here, . Support from DOE followed, here, and we looked at the company’s progress in the Bio Incredibles, here, in 2014, . Rumors of work with the Queensland’s bio-based ambitions followed, work inside the AB PDU, Even work on cannabinoids, here. Around that, CJ Bio’s increasing engagement with synbio and in and around the Bay Area. Then, a massive SPAC merger with FSI, ultimately cancelled, a partnership with Flexible Solutions to branch into aspartic acid, a partnership with Praj for lactic acid. Plus, research partnerships with U Mass and Ginkgo BioWorks. Then, a tie-up with CJ Bio and Lygos last year, and now this. Point is, it’s a long Walk to Fossil Freedom.

Pyran uses intermediates from renewable feedstocks, such as corn cobs, wood and sugarcane bagasse, to make 1,5 PDO, enhancing the performance of everyday products such as paints, coatings, adhesives and more. The company’s renewable 5-carbon products, including 1,5 PDO, replace expensive and supply-constrained petroleum-based chemicals. READ MORE