Happy Monday morning!

There are a couple of company announcements that I’ve heard on the bio-surfactants market but we’ll focus on this recent announcement from BASF who is very familiar with this market given its broad range of oleochemical-based surfactant products as well as its sugar surfactant, alkypolyglucosides (APG^®).

BASF recently signed two partnership agreements to expand its global leading position in the bio-based surfactants and actives market.  BASF established a strategic alliance including an equity stake with Allied Carbon Solutions Co. (ACS) Ltd., a commercial provider of surfactants from biomass based in Japan, making BASF the single-largest shareholder. It further entails an exclusive technology cooperation, commercial agreement and product development for sophorolipids, one class of glycolipids, to address the ever-increasing needs of consumers for sustainable, natural and bio-degradable ingredients and actives. The partners did not disclose any financial details of the investment.

BASF has already developed a novel sophorolipid-based ingredient produced via fermentation technology in collaboration with ACS, which was launched it in the Asian market under the brand name BioToLife™ in the second quarter of 2020. While the first product is already available, ACS and BASF will deepen the collaboration with the focus to develop a range of formulations based on sophorolipids with targeted performance.

BASF also established a strategic technology cooperation with Holiferm Ltd. based in the UK to develop a state-of-the-art production process for bio-surfactant products. BASF establishes an exclusive cooperation to focus on developing different glycolipids outside of sophorolipids for Personal and Home Care as well as Industrial Formulators applications.

I will write more market updates about glycolipids in Tecnon OrbiChem’s Bio-Materials April issue.