Solazyme And Algenol To Make More Algae

Newly public algae products firm Solazyme is on schedule to make a microalgae-derived food ingredient with its partner Roquette in Lestrem, France. The first facility of Solazyme Roquette Nutritionals will produce 300 metric tons per year beginning in 2012. It will be expanded to 5,000 metric tons later in the year. Meanwhile, in Lee County, Fla., start-up Algenol has broken ground on a 100,000-gal-per-year pilot-scale biorefinery, where it will produce ethanol from blue-green algae grown in photobioreactors. The firm has wrapped up a development program with Dow Chemical, which developed specialty plastics and films for use in the bioreactors.