Mascoma’s CEO steps down as company’s focus on commercialization steps up

In Massachusetts, Mascoma announced that CEO Bruce Jamerson is stepping down, and Mascoma’s VP for R&D of R&D and operations,  Jim Flatt, will take the role as acting president and lead the company temporarily while the company searches for a new CEO. Jamerson will become chairman of Mascoma and CEO of the company’s Frontier Renewable Resources subsidiary that is developing a 40 Mgy cellulosic ethanol plant in Kinross, Michigan.

“As Mascoma and Frontier move rapidly towards technology deployment, it makes strategic sense for me to hand over the reins of day-to-day business and focus on bringing our first operating facility online,” Mr. Jamerson said in a statement released by the company. “I am pleased that the company is on excellent footing, and am now looking forward to working closely with our new CEO on achieving our goal of commercial production of cellulosic ethanol.”

“We have made great strides in proving our technology and now we must focus on ensuring our organization and efforts are appropriately structured to succeed in translating Mascoma’s pioneering CBP technology to full-scale,” said Dr. Flatt in a statement released by the company. “I also look forward to continuing active oversight of and participation in our R&D and Operations efforts, as we support Frontier’s development efforts.”

Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media commented: “If you are looking for a company that symbolizes the highs and lows of cellulosic ethanol, Mascoma wouldn’t be a bad choice…the company attracted investments and celebrity coverage…Enter reality. Tennessee scaled back. The New York pilot plant was opened late and then scaled down…VCs and investors retreated from biofuels. Meanwhile, various competitors – ZeaChem, Coskata, Biolight Harvesting, Solazyme etc. – have pushed forward with biofuel systems that relies less on creating exotic, multifunctional microorganisms.”

In the announcement, Jamerson, who arrived from now-bankrupt VeraSun Energy in 2007 and eventually forced out former president Colin Smith, emphasized that it was time to find a CEO more focused on operations and scale-up, rather than an executive skilled in financing and other early-stage activities. Similar themes were cited in the arrival of Bill Haywood as CEO of LS9, the departure of Martin Tobias from Imperium at Christmastime in 2007, and the replacement of Range Fuels founder and CEO Mitch Mandich, who led the company through an $100 million capital raise and secured $80 million funding for cellulosic ethanol demonstration from the DOE, with David Aldous, a former EVP of Strategy and Portfolio for Shell.

Last May, there was brighter news from Mascoma. It announced a breakthrough that is reducing the cost of cellulosic ethanol production by up to 60 percent in lab tests. The breakthrough related to consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) – a transformational technology which the DOE/USDA 2006 Roadmap called “the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation,” and which reduces or eliminates the need for added enzymes to process pretreated lignocellulose into ethanol.

Mascoma has reported that, in the lab, based on multiple runs with reduced enzyme requirements, it is seeing normalized per gallon operating costs in March at just under 40 percent of  its  June 2008 baseline. Mascoma’s results are demonstrating that CBP is much closer than thought, but it is clear that the Mascoma board believes that proof of concept in the lab is not being translated quickly enough into production results at the plant.

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