So here’s another word to include in my renewables dictionary – “Biofacturing”, which according to Zymergen, is the design, development and commercialization of bio-based breakthrough products, economically, at an industrial scale, where microorganisms create the biomolecules that are the key ingredients in those products.
As of 22 April California-based biofacturing company Zymergen began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ZY” and was able to offer 16.13 million shares at $31/share. The gross proceeds from the offering are expected to be around $500 million. The offering is expected to close on April 26, 2021. The cash raise comes on the heels of a $400 million Series C back in 2018 and a $300 million raise in September.
Zymergen said its goal is to launch products in about half the time and cut the cost of what traditional chemicals and materials companies can deliver by around 90%. Zymergen’s technology platform brings together robotic automation, machine learning and genomics to design and manufacture novel materials via the use of synthetic biology.
The company’s first biomolecule is Hyaline, a family of polyimide films, which was launched in December 2020, and the first in a franchise of optical films, designed for electronics companies to use for display touch sensors in personal devices and other applications. I’m not familiar with polyimides, which according to a googled result, are high-temperature engineering polymers that exhibit an exceptional combination of thermal stability, mechanical toughness and chemical resistance. They are formed from diamines or diisocyanates and dianhydrides, and have excellent dielectric properties and inherently low coefficient of thermal expansion.
Zymergen has this program called Launch Acceleration where in some cases, the molecules they have identified during the design phase is first produced with non-fermentation based methods (through a third party). The higher cost of production is temporarily absorbed until the company is able to replace these non-fermentation produced biomolecules/components with fermentation-produced versions in 12-24 months. Hyaline, for example, is currently produced by a third party through a non-fermentation process, and Zymergen says it is now executing a process to convert to a fermentation-produced molecule, which is expected to occur in 2022. While this system will be used frequently in the company’s electronics pipeline, Zymergen says it will be rarely used in consumer care or agriculture products.
Zymergen plans a slate of rollouts from these three markets in 2022 and 2023. There is certainly more to learn about Zymergen. The company’s current collaborators according to its website include Sumitomo Chemical, Mitsubishi Chemical, Toray, CJ Cheiljedang, Solvay, FMC, Syngenta, Ajinomoto, ADM and Cargill.
