Royal DSM Invests in Amyris Expands Development Efforts

THE NETHERLANDS: DSM is making 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.


According to the companies, Amyris’ technology supports DSM’s strategic markets in health, nutrition and materials, as well as a growing consumer shift to natural-like products derived from sustainable sources.


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.


DSM has agreed to make an initial equity investment in Amyris of $25 million, translating into a shareholding of approximately 12%. Subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, DSM may invest an additional $25 million in Amyris. The first tranche closed last month, with a second tranche expected to close within 90 days of the closing of the first. 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 and production opportunities in vitamins and other nutritional ingredients.


“We are very excited about DSM’s strategic focus in health and nutrition markets and its commitment to sustainable sourcing and production of better-performing products,” said John Melo, Amyris president and CEO. “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.”


“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,” said Chris Goppelsroeder, president and CEO of DSM Nutritional Products. “Working closely together with Amyris and leveraging DSM’s route-to-market, will accelerate our innovation toward cost-effective, fermentation-based processes for both existing and new products.”