Lygos Partners with CJ BIO to Produce Bio-Based Polymers and Malonates

Lygos announced a Memorandum of Understanding with CJ BIO to produce and deliver a wide range of high-performance, sustainable products to the market. As part of the collaboration, Lygos will develop a commercial-scale biorefinery complex in Fort Dodge, Iowa, combining CJ BIO’s expertise in fermentation and biotechnology with Lygos’ advanced biology, chemistry and application development technologies to deliver high-performance, sustainable solutions.

The biorefinery complex, which consists of a series of facilities that produce high-value chemicals and materials from sustainable feedstocks, will leverage the infrastructure and capabilities of CJ’s existing facilities, while Lygos will develop additional facilities and downstream operations to produce its products.

“CJ BIO recently established a precision fermentation CDMO business to bring more bio-based solutions to market,” said Lance Choi, CEO of CJ BIO America. "Expanding our existing CDMO partnership with Lygos to produce commercial quantities of their products will help us fulfill our mission of delivering innovative and sustainable products to large markets."

"We have identified a clear, higher-performance value proposition with our customers to bring these products to market and are now excited to expand our partnership with CJ to develop a biorefinery complex in Fort Dodge to commercially produce our products in an easily scalable facility," said Eric Steen, founder and CEO of Lygos. “We look forward to contributing to a community with a rich history and growing interest in biomanufacturing.”

The complex will be part of Iowa’s Global Innovation Crossroads, an agri-industrial park designed to foster collaboration and growth in the biomanufacturing sector, located west of Fort Dodge. With 100% renewable electricity, sustainable feedstock supply and excellent logistics, the site is an ideal location for the biorefinery. CJ’s existing facility is adjacent to Cargill’s Fort Dodge corn mill, which will provide utilities and a supply of plant sugars, a bio-based feedstock that is fermented into a key intermediate for Lygos’ products. Lygos anticipates a post-groundbreaking construction period of 18-24 months, will employ up to 350 temporary workers during construction, and will create approximately 60 highly skilled jobs once the facility is fully operational.

The biorefinery will support widespread commercialization of Lygos’ flagship products, producing up to 40,000 metric tons of Soltellus™ biodegradable polymers and Ecoteria™ bio-based malonates annually, with the potential to scale to 100,000 metric tons. The partnership also contemplates the expansion of bio-based aspartic acid production and the launch of new bio-based and biodegradable materials, providing Lygos’ business partners with more solutions to improve overall performance and achieve sustainability goals.

The Biorefinery Complex, combined with the recently announced San Francisco Bay Area Center for Sustainable Solutions, provides a fully integrated commercialization platform for the entire value chain, enabling Lygos to control the product development process from lab scale to pilot scale to commercial production, enabling seamless collaboration with customers to cost-effectively develop and scale high-performance products to accelerate time to market.

“We are pioneering a new business model to efficiently bring sustainable solutions to market,” said Steen. “The Biorefinery Complex, combined with our unique Collaborative to Acceleration strategy, enables us to control the entire product development process from ideation to R&D to commercial delivery, helping us scale our flagship products while providing tremendous future value potential.”