September 29, 2014

Bunge Global Innovation LLC, a fully owned subsidiary of Bunge and Proterro have announced a joint development agreement to use Proterro’s photobioreactors at Bunge’s Moena Fazenda surgarcane mill that could generate fermentable sugars for ethanol production.  Proterro makes sucrose instead of extracting it from crops or from cellulosic materials, and the company has successfully produced 145 tons of sugar per acre per year in greenhouses – 29 times more productive than sugarcane and 36 times more productive than producing sugar from corn.  The current difficult sugar market environment has led Bunge to explore divesting itself of its sugar interests, but it is the same environment that would make finding interested buyers a challenge, making the Proterro partnership advantageous.  Bunge recently entered into a joint venture with Solazyme, a renewable oil company that uses sugars as feedstock to create designer oils for use in personal products, food, chemicals and oil field services.  By bridging Proterro’s and Solazyme’s technologies, Proterro could use the carbon dioxide emissions from Bunge’s operations at Moema and could one day be integral in Solazyme transition away from conventional sugar feedstocks while improving Bunge’s margins.  To read further:

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