Amyris, Inc. the industrial bioscience company, and the Government of Queensland, Australia today announced a partnership to create a southeast hub of sustainable ingredients production for the rapidly-growing personal care sector in Asia, while supporting Queensland’s local economy and sugarcane industry. The partnership aims to develop a new production plant with support from local partners. The plant will produce Amyris’s high-value personal care and nutraceutical actives, as well as farnesene-derivative products.
Globally, key trends are driving expansion in the market for sustainable ingredients that are natural and plant-derived rather than animal derived, and that are efficient and pure, yet offer high-performing characteristics. With economic expansion and growing consumer demand for high quality skin care and nutraceutical products in Asian countries this market is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world for Amyris products and technology.
Amyris ingredients are naturally derived from sustainable sources and are delivering disruptive performance to its partner companies and to their consumers. Many of these companies are based in Asian countries and have significant current and projected growth.
Queensland is the perfect location to build a strong Industrial Biotechnology hub and manufacturing base to supply these markets given its resources, cost-effective sugar supply source and geographic location. The combination of Amyris, the world’s leading industrial biotechnology with domain expertise in advanced bio-manufacturing of sustainable products in partnership with Queensland to support additional manufacturing capacity and access to its local highly educated workforce and sugarcane is anticipated to create a leading source of product and strong economic development for the region. Should the first plant begin producing in 2020 for Southeast Asian markets, it is anticipated that $60-$80 million in annual revenue would be generated. This would potentially give a 2-3 year payback for investors in the production plant.
“We welcome Amyris to Queensland and look forward to their pursuit of innovative ideas. Amyris will enhance Queensland’s reputation as a supportive investment location for the industrial biotechnology and bioproducts sector. The Queensland Government is committed to continuing to work with Amyris and will assist in connecting the company with local suppliers and businesses,” said The Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, Premier of Queensland.
“We’re delighted to working with Queensland to facilitate the creation of what we expect will be a leading Industrial Biotechnology hub supplying growing demand in Southeast Asia,” said John Melo, Amyris President & CEO. “We’re very encouraged at the commitment to innovation and sustainability demonstrated by the Government of Queensland. The sustainability and performance of the local sugarcane industry enables us to make this our second global technology and manufacturing center, beyond our strong base in Brazil. We expect this to be our first large scale implementation of our capital light growth model, where we bring the technology and the end customers and our partners fund and operate the manufacturing. This model enables us to create more opportunities to provide sustainable products for a better planet.”
Amyris and the Government of Queensland are actively working on this program to facilitate pathways for the development of a commercial plant and production. Through this alignment of each parties’ common goals, clear lines have been established and first industrial production of product at the new production facility is expected to occur in 2020.
The two parties have enjoyed a long-term successful relationship in working together to support global sustainability initiatives, growth in renewable products and diversification of Queensland’s economy. This initially began with the Queensland Government’s 2010 Queensland Sustainable Aviation Fuel Initiative, which studied the feasibility of locally producing aviation biofuels using Queensland sugar. More recently, in June 2016, Amyris and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at The University of Queensland signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support the development of a Queensland-based biotechnology industry using feedstock from local sugarcane.
