The Netherlands-headed Koninklijke DSM N.V. (Royal DSM), a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials and US-headed industrial bioscience company Amyris, Inc., have announced that they have agreed for DSM to make an equity investment in Amyris. At the same time, the companies will enter into a development cooperation focused on products for the global health and nutrition markets including vitamins and other nutritional ingredients.
According to a joint-statement, Amyris’ technology supports DSM’s strategic markets in health, nutrition, and materials as well as a growing consumer shift to (bio-) natural-like products derived from sustainable sources.
Amyris has a unique yeast-based strain engineering platform that is very complementary to DSM’s capabilities in this area and will create great synergy with DSM’s know-how in fermentation, downstream process development and large-scale manufacturing. Working closely together with Amyris and leveraging DSM’s route-to-market, will accelerate our innovation towards cost-effective, fermentation-based processes for both existing and new products, said Chris Goppelsroeder, President and CEO of DSM Nutritional Products.
For Amyris, DSM’s channels and market access and keen understanding in selecting the right products for the animal nutrition, human nutrition, and consumer health markets provide strategic value.
Equity Investment
DSM has agreed to make an initial equity investment in Amyris of US$25 million, translating into a shareholding of approximately 12 percent. Subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, DSM may invest an additional US$25 million in Amyris.
The first tranche is expected to close on May 11, 2017, with a second tranche, if approved by DSM’s Managing Board, expected to close within 90 days of the closing of the first tranche. As part of this investment, DSM will gain one board seat upon the closing of each tranche.
As part of the agreement, DSM and Amyris have agreed to focus on a number of short- to medium-term product development & production opportunities in vitamins and other nutritional ingredients.
We are very excited about DSM’s strategic focus on health and nutrition markets and its commitment to sustainable sourcing and production of better-performing products. The Amyris technology platform and potential synergy can lead to significant cost improvements for DSM while accelerating Amyris’s market access. We expect this will lead to incremental revenue in 2017, growing annually based on the number of products we develop in our partnership and our pace of delivery, said John Melo, President and CEO, Amyris.
