Amyris and Firmenich Announce Expansion of Collaboration in Flavors & Fragrances

In California, Amyris and Firmenich announced a material expansion of their collaboration to develop and commercialize renewable ingredients for the Flavors and Fragrances market. Outside existing Amyris relationships, the new collaboration agreement provides Firmenich with exclusive access to the Amyris technology platform for the F&F market in exchange for significant funding over the next six years.

Firmenich will jointly select additional target F&F ingredients that Amyris will develop and manufacture. Firmenich will market and distribute any ingredients resulting from the collaboration exclusively in the F&F market. Both parties will share in the economic value derived from the sale of these ingredients.

Under a previous agreement established in November 2010, Firmenich funded Amyris’s research and development to produce up to three F&F ingredients, with an initial fragrance oil targeted for commercialization in early 2014. Under the new agreement, Amyris and “An expanded, six-year collaboration helps fill in another piece of needed development funding ($30MM over the next three years),” wrote Cowen & Company analyst Rob Stone in a note to shareholders. “AMRS noted that more than 50% of expected $60-70MM partner funding was firm as of February 19th. A total of $58MM was characterized as “complete or close to complete,” so we surmise that the Firmenich deal was included in that total.”