Solazyme's proprietary biotechnology enables us to create renewable, tailored oils serving a variety of chemical applications.
Our technology allows us to produce tailored oils with controlled chain lengths, saturation levels and functional group additions. The oils we produce for the chemical market can have specific melting points, varying concentrations of desired fatty acids, and high concentrations of sought-after but unusual fatty acids.
Agreements along the chemicals value chain include:
Unilever
In March 2010, Solazyme entered into a research and development agreement with Unilever to develop oil derived from algae for use in soaps and other personal care products. The agreement followed the culmination of a yearlong collaboration between Solazyme and Unilever, in which Solazyme's renewable algal oils were tested successfully in Unilever product formulations. For more information on this agreement, read here.
The Dow Chemical Company
In February 2011, Solazyme entered into a joint development agreement with The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) in connection with the development of microbe-derived dielectric fluids. Pursuant to the agreement, we began working with Dow to develop algal oils for use as dielectric fluids in the transformer market. In May 2012, we furthered entered into an offtake agreement with Dow, in which Dow agreed to purchase from us all of its requirements of non-vegetable microbe-based oils for use in dielectric fluid applications through 2015, contingent on our ability to produce such oils. We also entered into a JDA2, an exclusive, multi-year extension of our current joint-development agreement which enables additional application development work to be conducted by Dow. For more information on this agreement read here.