We just published our Glucaric Acid Chemical profile last Tuesday for Tecnon OrbiChem’s Biomaterials newsletter (note: subscription required), but unfortunately, we were not able to include this news about Rennovia’s exit until I read about it today from Biofuel Digest.

According to the article, Santa Clara, California-based Rennovia ceased its operations (I am not sure when exactly) after the company failed to raise sufficient financing from investors and/or strategic partners (e.g. ADM? Johnson Matthey?) to advance its pilot-scale technology to commercial production.  The bulk of the IP assets have reportedly been sold and the company’s physical assets are currently in liquidation. The liquidation will start on March 20 for two days for those who are interested in buying some of their equipment and other physical assets.

Rennovia has been targeting the nylon market intermediates with glucose-based alternatives such as adipic acid via the glucaric acid route, and hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) via the 1,6 hexanediol (HDO) route using a chemocatalytic process. After a few years of low oil prices (and therefore low petro-based nylon intermediates prices), Rennovia refocused its bio-nylon intermediates strategy to the development and production of glucaric acid and HDO instead. The company started its pilot production in early 2017 with the help of Archer Daniels Midland.

The bio-based nylon market is a tough nut to crack although there are traditional chemical companies who are already producing bio-based polyamides such as PA6,10; PA11, and PA10,10 from castor oil. There is Cathay Industrial Biotech who has been producing sugar-based pentanediamine (as an alternative to HMDA) as well as long-chain dicarboxylic acids. Verdezyne is on the verge of starting its fermentation-based diacids facility in Malaysia this year, while Genomatica is working on bio-based caprolactam with polyamide producer Aquafil.

Based on my (short-term) memory, here are some of the bio-based chemical companies that either folded or been acquired: Rennovia, OPXBio, Liquid Light, Metabolix, TerraVia (Solazyme), Plaxica, Segetis, GlycosBio, Coskata, Virent, Cobalt Technologies, Greencol Taiwan, TMO Renewables, Cereplast, Proterro, Mascoma, Zeachem, Biomer…

The good news is that I am also seeing new company names in the bio-based chems R&D and some of them I will post soon.