Locus secures investment to expand biosurfactants business

US speciality chemical company Locus Fermentation Solutions (Locus FS) has secured an investment of US$117M to expand its biosurfactant business.

The loan would use Locus’s intellectual property (IP), including more than 1,300 patents, as collateral, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) wrote on 20 April.

Using custom microbial fermentation to produce speciality surfactants, most of Locus’ products were based on sophorolipids

– biosurfactants with hydrophilic sophorose sugar heads and a range of hydrophobic fatty acid tails, C&EN wrote.

Locus chairman and CEO Andy Lefkowitz was quoted as saying the loan would help the company triple its overall factory space to 14,000m3 at its headquarters site in Solon, Ohio, and at other locations.

Organised as a holding company with operating companies focused on different markets, Lefkowitz said the firm’s fast- est-growing market was oil drilling and mining.

One of the companies, Locus Performance Ingredients, recently signed a pact with Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions to develop water and wastewater treatment products based on sophorolipids, C&EN wrote. Locus also has a deal under which Dow is the exclusive supplier of Locus’ sophorolipids in the home care and personal care markets.

USA: Leading US energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan (KMI) has announced an agreement on 8 May with Finnish renewable fuels producer Neste to store feedstocks, such as used cooking oil (UCO), at its Harvey terminal in Louisiana.

The feedstocks – including UCO collected by Neste from more than 80,000 restaurants across the USA – would be used to produce renewable fuels and plastics, KMI said. Improvements had been made to rail, truck and marine infrastructure at the facility to meet the requirements of Neste’s feedstock supply chain.

USA: Global agricultural commodity company Viterra has announced plans to expand its grain and feed ingredients terminal in Etter, Texas, World Grain reported on 22 May. The expansion would increase the terminal’s storage capacity by more than 40,000 tonnes by late 2024.

“The project… will allow us to support the continuing expansion of oilseed crush and meal production across North America,” Viterra CEO of USA and Mexico Rayner Freyberg said.

Viterra has a network of agricultural storage, processing and transport operations and sources commodities such as grains, oilseeds, pulses, rice, sugar, cotton and feed ingredients.