Electrosynthesis Co. and Partners Announce Major Success in their Chemicals from Corn Program

ELECTROSYNTHESIS COMPANY AND PARTNERS ANNOUNCE MAJOR SUCCESS IN THEIR CHEMICALS FROM CORN PROGRAM

Companies announce intent to produce ascorbic acid from glucose at Washington, DC ceremony

August 12, 1999, Rochester, NY — At a Department of Agriculture ceremony later today, where President William J. Clinton will sign an executive order promoting bioenergy and biobased products, Genencor and Eastman Chemical Company will announce their intent to commercialize their newest process for making ascorbic acid from glucose, a refined product of corn. The process, a significant advance over that announced last year at this time, combines the best of chemistry and biotechnology and signals a major breakthrough in the development of chemicals from corn. Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) has a worldwide market of approximately $600 million.

The new production process would eliminate several chemical steps from the traditional chemical synthesis of vitamin C and is totally aqueous. In so doing, the process achieves significant cost savings through lower capital costs (smaller, more efficient factories) and higher yield and productivity. These gains were made possible with metabolic pathway engineering and chemical processing improvements. The impact is much broader, however, than this one product.
“Our technology uses families of enzymes capable of many types of transformations,” said Tom Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of Genencor International. “We built a pathway to ascorbic acid, but we have the ability to add other enzymes to divert the synthesis toward other products. This proves that continuous biocatalysis is a viable and economic means to chemical synthesis. Possible future contributions from this technology will unleash the potential to use renewable carbon from agriculture to make many valuable products.”

“We believe that biotechnology will have an ever growing place in the production of chemicals,” said Earnie Deavenport, chairman and chief executive officer of Eastman Chemical Company. “Obviously, not all chemicals can be made this way, but a growing number will be and the combination of the two disciplines – biotechnology and chemistry – will have a major positive impact on the economy and the environment.”

The technology breakthrough was jointly financed by a five-company consortium and the US Department of Commerce’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In addition to Electrosynthesis Company, Genencor, and Eastman, the consortium includes MicroGenomics, Inc. and Argonne National Laboratory. Together, the companies are matching the $15.6 million award from the ATP, which was directed at developing a Continuous Biocatalytic Operating System. The consortium will continue to refine and improve the process during the final year of the program.

The ATP works with industry through cost-shared projects to develop high-risk technologies, like this one, that will have a major economic benefit to the nation. “Genencor, Eastman Chemicals and their partners have made considerable progress toward the final research goals of the project,” said ATP director Lura Powell, Ph.D. “Successful commercialization of their technology could have a significant positive impact on the U.S. economy in the chemical-process industry, and we are pleased to have played a role in helping to develop the fundamental technologies for continuous biocatalytic systems.”

Headquartered in Kingsport, Tenn., Eastman manufactures and markets plastics, chemicals and fibers. The company had 1998 sales of US $4.48 billion and has 16,000 employees in 30 countries.

Genencor is a leading biotechnology company with principal offices in Rochester, New York; Palo Alto, California; and, Leiden, the Netherlands. It operates manufacturing facilities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Elkhart, Indiana and in Europe, Latin America, and China.

This release can be found on the following websites: www.genencor.com and www.eastman.com.

Fill out our Contact form for more information.

Email us: info@electrosynthesis.com
Call Us: (716) 684-0513, ex.111
Fax Us: (716) 684-0511
Write to us:
72 Ward Road
Lancaster, NY 14086-9779 USA