It was disheartening to hear about Verdezyne, which recently and abruptly closed down its operations a few days ago. This news recently followed our grim news about BioAmber filing for bankruptcy and Rennovia also exiting the market this year.

I was attending Nova Institut’s Biomaterials conference in Cologne, Germany last week when I heard the rumor from a good colleague and then read the news from an article by Biofuel Digest. Today, an official (or should I say ex-official) from Verdezyne confirmed that it has stopped its operations as of May 15th.

Despite the fact that Verdezyne’s planned first commercial facility dubbed “VerdePalm” in Johor, Malaysia, is almost 85-90% complete, it seems its investor, Sime Darby, decided to pull out and decided not to participate anymore on the project. This has forced a decision by Verdezyne’s remaining investors to wind the company down.

The question now is what will happen to Verdezyne’s remaining assets in California (lab, pilot plant, IPs, etc.), and what will also happen to VerdePalm? In fact, BioXcell Malaysia and Verdezyne both posted late last month on their respective social media sites the construction progress at VerdePalm (see video below). I am hoping to hear back some comments from our friends in Malaysia and from Sime Darby itself.

More on this story as well as market information on dodecanedioic acid (which is what Verdezyne was supposed to produce at VerdePalm) will be reported at Tecnon OrbiChem’s June issue of its Biomaterials newsletter.