Chemicals

A history of success in supporting the world’s leading chemical manufacturers to transition to viable, sustainable bioprocessing makes us your ideal partner to realise innovative, clean growth opportunities in biobased chemical manufacturing.

You can read more about our expertise and success stories below.

Feedstock Switching from Petrochemical Inputs

Our Engineering Biology expertise extends to a dozen biological host platforms and our expertise in accessing non-fossil feedstock options includes:

  • Glucose, lactose, sucrose, maltose, starches and other simple mono-/di-/oligo-/poly-saccharides.
  • Cellulose, hemicellulose, xylose and other 2nd generation feedstocks.
  • Gaseous feedstocks including sustainable methane, carbon dioxide, renewable hydrogen.
  • Additional sustainable substrates from non-conventional sources.

We have a proven track record in engineering a broad range of microorganisms including bacteria, yeast and fungal species, each offering specific advantages for the product and the demands of the manufacturing process.

Shake flasks on a clean lab work surface

Scalable Manufacture

Our manufacturing route design prioritises ‘full scale first’ principles to ensure that from project inception the development plan meets the end use requirement needs of full-scale commercial manufacturing. We exploit world leading integrated expertise in microbiology, fermentation, chemical sciences and molecular biology, providing us with a uniquely equipped team that can deliver a cleaner and more sustainable biobased manufacturing solution.

Our services include:

  • Rapid identification of the most viable engineering biology host microbe(s) to produce and sustain commercial titres of your product.
  • Maximising efficiency of feedstock carbon conversion, typically aiming for >80% yield to product.
  • Maximising space time volumetric productivity of the manufacturing process, typically aiming for multigram/L/h.
  • Maximising titre of chemical product, typically aiming for 50-100g/L or greater range.
  • Maximising fermentation cost-efficiencies by migrating control from batch to fed-batch or continuous mode operation.
  • Exploiting the best of both worlds in chemistry and biological technology offerings, integrating up- and/or down-stream chemical processes within bioprocesses to achieve optimal commercial performance.
  • Intelligent design to identify opportunities to enable efficient low cost and low energy product isolation and recovery approaches, e.g. avoidance of chromatographic steps.
Scientists at fermentation equipment

Process Development Support

With you on every step of the journey, we support successful feasibility, viability, pilot and full-scale manufacture of your product.

Our services include:

  • Generation and safe storage of Master and Working Cell banks of customer proprietary strains.
  • Exemplifying innovation by acquiring scientific evidence to secure client owned foreground IP for specific products and processes.
  • Regular, detailed technical reporting of work conducted towards agreed milestones and deliverables.
  • Full documentation and onsite support for technology transfer to manufacturing locations.
Documentation on a clean lab work surface