The alliance is structured as a deep collaboration, with two-way sharing of technology and intellectual property, along with joint technology development, to provide a single unified offering to the market.

The alliance aims to accelerate the transition of the mainstream chemical industry to biological process technology. Bio-based production of intermediate chemicals can deliver better overall economics and greater sustainability and performance by harnessing the power of biotechnology and microorganism engineering to grow products.

Only a few dozen chemicals at the heart of the mainstream industry, with markets up to millions of tons and many billions of dollars each, are used to make the thousands of everyday products that fill our homes, stores and offices. Bringing together a full stack of best-in-class capabilities with clear industry leadership, the alliance provides a compelling new reason for mainstream chemical firms to explore and adopt these new biological technologies.

Genomatica has already proven the ability to develop and transfer to the industry new process technologies that work at high-volume commercial plants. Novamont, a Genomatica-licensee, has just announced the grand opening of the world’s first commercial plant for bio-production of a major intermediate chemical. Novamont’s $100-million plant, built in Bottrighe, Italy, will produce 30,000 tons per year of the chemical 1,4-butanediol powered by Genomatica’s process technology.

Also, Ginkgo announced the launch of their next generation foundry, Bioworks2. With twice the size and at least 6X expected increase in capacity, Bioworks2 represents a step change in what is possible for organism design.