DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences and Kemira to develop and commercialize new biomaterials
Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.
DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences and Kemira have announced an exclusive partnership for the development and commercialization of DuPont’s enzymatic biomaterial platform technology. This collaboration will allow both partners to commercialize a range of new biobased and biodegradable products in their respective core markets in the upcoming years.
Press release: “Kemira and DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences partner for development and commercialization of new breakthrough biomaterials”, 17/12/2020.
Figure 1. DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences and Kemira to develop and commercialize new biomaterials (taken from the DuPont press release)
Under the terms of the partnership, DuPont will provide Kemira with access to its newest material platform technology, which uses enzymatic polymerization to design and produce polysaccharide materials directly from simple sugars. Kemira’s role in the partnership will be to provide the application development expertise and market access required to leverage the full potential of the technology in sectors such as paper and board industry, water treatment as well as oil & gas industries. Kemira will be the exclusive provider of the new biomaterials to its core markets, while DuPont will continue to develop and commercialize the platform for other applications in its own target markets.
The DuPont enzymatic polymerization material technology applies biotechnology tools to design polysaccharides. This material innovation allows for enzymatic polymerization of sugar (sucrose) into poly-glucose (polysaccharides) under controlled, enzyme catalyzed polymerization conditions. This approach enables the specific and designed synthesis of polysaccharides as typically found in nature but with high purity, defined structural material properties and particle morphologies. The technology readiness of the production platform is at advanced pilot scale.