S67: Biochemicals development at Novozymes: technical and commercial aspects

Driven by high crude oil prices, geopolitical instability, depletion of oil reserves and increased awareness of global environmental pressures, there has been a steady increase in investment in developing processes for production of chemical building blocks from renewable resources.  The technical and business competencies that have made Novozymes the world’s largest industrial enzyme company also lend themselves well to metabolic engineering for the production of chemical compounds.  Since 2006, Novozymes has established a business and R&D platform to pursue technology development for production of bulk chemical building blocks by fermentation.  This presentation will (1) generally describe Novozymes’ R&D activities in metabolic engineering, (2) discuss the technical and intellectual property challenges, including some relevant examples and (3) describe our business approach to maximizing value while managing the substantial technical and financial risk of these projects.