by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Pennsylvania bioeconomy pioneers debuts Celltice, a “Petro-Free Breakthrough in Clean Cosmetic Formulations” — From Pennsylvania, comes the news that Renmatix is introducing Celltice, its “zero-chemical self-emulsifying active,” built from cellulose and lignin, and aimed at the clean beauty movement towards petro-free, plant-based ingredients for clean cosmetics with minimalist formulations, seeking sustainable, cruelty-free ingredients that also deliver comparable or superior performance to traditional ingredients. It’s billed as a “a cost-advantaged, high-performing, multi-functional ingredient,” which hits just about all of the high notes.
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You probably remember that Renmatix was going to make cellulosic sugars, and you’ll see Kiverdi highlighting its CO2 to protein technology, and Oakbio getting new investment and a new identity — now named NovoNutrients and avowedly aimed at protein for aquaculture — fish feed, specifically, from CO2. And you might recall that former Codexis CEO Alan Shaw’s latest venture, Calysta, is making fish feed from methane. Just to name a few.
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The problem of course is that consumers and strategics are interested in applications, but what investors own are technologies, and when the economics don’t work out or the timelines begin to get stretched beyond the ability of ventures to tolerate the crush imposed by the time value of money, you get a big case of the spins, which sometimes are elegantly done, as in the case of Renmatix — after all, it’s really just a case of Renmatix taking its core Plantrose process and developing something that can specifically be handed off to a formulator, not much pivoting there, more like a case of thoughtful extending. The messaging around it feels a little more spinny, but that’s more about the Prose than the Plantrose.
Others feel like the spins induced by drinking too much fraternity beer — sudden, hard to control, and sickening.
We consumers pivot from technology to technology in search of sustainable alternatives, and technologists pivot from niche to niche in search of something to make that will make money. It’s a Heartbreak Hotel.
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After all, food is big and cosmetics are big and the search for new sensations is nothing unfamiliar to companies or consumers, and if you reflect that there’s about ten cents of sugar in a four dollar box of Corn Flakes, and a few pennies of active ingredient in your average skin cream, the margins and mark-ups that are available for market winners that get a foothold on the shelf are exactly the Get Out of Fuels Free card that some investors have been seeking. Ever since some of them figured out that beating petroleum refining on cost is not as easy as it looked. So, more power to all of them. READ MORE