Minneapolis, Minnesota — BioAmber is closer to a loan guarantee for $360 m from the US Department of Energy which could help fund a proposed second manufacturing facility in the US.
BioAmber's proposed second facility will be over six times the size of its existing Sarnia plant, with annual capacity of 60kT/year bio-based succinic acid, 70 kT/year bio-based 1,4-butanediol (BDO), and 24 kT/year bio-based tetrahydrofuran (THF). Using ten year average feedstock and chemical pricing, and the same performance targets as the Sarnia plant, this facility is forecast to generate annual sales of over $350 m and $150 m of EBITDA at full capacity.
Jean-Francois Huc, BioAmber's ceo said: "Our first commercial plant in Sarnia is ramping up to full capacity and performance is on track. Securing funding for our second facility would be the cornerstone of our next phase of growth, where we will have expanded our product line to include bio-BDO and bio-THF."
The DOE's Loan Program Office (LPO) administers a four-phase process under the XVII Innovative Clean Energy Projects loan guarantee program. This program finances innovative renewable energy and efficient energy projects. BioAmber successfully completed the first two phases of the process and will start negotiating the terms and conditions of the loan with the LPO in the third stage of the process. It will work with the LPO to validate the engineering, environmental, market and financial information that BioAmber submitted in the previous phases.
