QUINCY, MA — Myriant Corp., a global renewable chemicals company, announced the successful scaling and commercial production of bio-succinic acid at ThyssenKrupp Uhde’s biotech commercial validation facility in Leuna, Germany. The production process meets targets for commercial yield and product quality.

Myriant and ThyssenKrupp Uhde signed an exclusive agreement in 2009 to commercialize bio-succinic acid. The two companies have worked together since then to achieve two main objectives of the agreement. First, to ensure that the bio-succinic acid process is cost competitive and that it produces the highest purity product at commercial scale. Second, to enable ThyssenKrupp Uhde to provide important process and performance guarantees for the bio-succinic acid process at future Myriant plants built by Uhde.

“With the success at Leuna, we have achieved the first objective set out in our alliance agreement with ThyssenKrupp Uhde. Producing on-spec, commercial-grade bio-succinic acid while meeting our commercial cost targets would not be possible without the expert engineering, design and process expertise of ThyssenKrupp Uhde, our global alliance partner and our selected engineering partner for future commercial production plants,” said Cenan Ozmeral, Myriant’s Chief Operating Officer.

Myriant's high-purity bio-succinic acid is made from renewable feedstocks and is chemically equivalent to petroleum-based succinic acid while providing a lower environmental footprint. It reduces harmful green house gas emissions by 94 percent compared to petroleum-derived succinic acid and by 93 percent compared to petroleum-derived adipic acid.