ICIG Pur­chases Bioeth­an­ol Plant from Clari­ant in Romania, Strength­en­ing Its Bio­tech­no­logy Business

In the future, the site will be oper­ated by ICIG’s bio­tech­no­logy sub­si­di­ary Corden Bio­Chem. As a bio­tech­no­logy CDMO, Corden Bio­Chem already oper­ates one of Europe’s largest fer­ment­a­tion plants at the indus­tri­al park in Frank­furt-Höchst, Germany.

The acquis­i­tion of the Podari site expands Corden BioChem’s aer­obic fer­ment­a­tion capa­cit­ies by approx­im­ately 1,500 m³ (gross volume). In addi­tion, the site will provide Corden Bio­Chem with a new capa­city of 10,000 m³ for anaer­obic fer­ment­a­tions. The size of the Podari fer­menters between 300 and 2.500 m³ will allow Corden Bio­Chem to offer large scale, cost com­pet­it­ive fer­ment­a­tion ser­vices to its customers.

As part of the reor­gan­isa­tion of the site into a flex­ible con­tract man­u­fac­turer for fer­ment­a­tion products, ICIG is plan­ning fur­ther invest­ments in the high double-digit mil­lion range, par­tic­u­larly for neces­sary down­stream operations.

Corden Bio­Chem plans to put the plant into oper­a­tion as soon as pos­sible after the clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion, which is sub­ject to cus­tom­ary loc­al fil­ing require­ments, and will rehire a large pro­por­tion of the employ­ees laid off by Clari­ant after the decommissioning.

About Inter­na­tion­al Chem­ic­al Investors Group (ICIG):
Inter­na­tion­al Chem­ic­al Investors Group is a privately owned indus­tri­al group with a total turnover of more than €3.6 bil­lion. ICIG focuses on sev­er­al main plat­forms: Fine Chem­ic­als under the WeylChem brand, Care Chem­ic­als (Catexel), Chlorov­inyls (Vyn­ova), Com­pounds (Ben­vic), Hydro­car­bons & Solvents (HCS Group) and Enter­prises with spe­cial­ized busi­nesses in sodi­um metals, indus­tri­al dry­ing ser­vices, fer­ment­a­tion products, vis­cose fil­a­ments, activ­ated car­bon and wood pro­tec­tion chem­ic­als. Today, ICIG com­pan­ies employ more than 6,800 people and oper­ate more than 46 pro­duc­tion sites in Europe, India and the United States. 

About Corden Bio­Chem (CBC):
Corden Bio­Chem GmbH is a lead­ing con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing organ­iz­a­tion for biotech products, with one of the largest fer­ment­a­tion facil­it­ies in Europe. More than 70 years of exper­i­ence in upscal­ing and large-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing ensure the suc­cess­ful and reli­able pro­duc­tion of our cus­tom­ers’ products. CBC excels in deliv­er­ing high-qual­ity food, feed, and tech­nic­al products, func­tion­al ingredi­ents and fine chem­ic­als. In addi­tion to the extens­ive fer­ment­a­tion capa­cit­ies, the pro­duc­tion site in Frank­furt also offers the cor­res­pond­ing multi-step down­stream pro­cessing plant to pro­duce high qual­ity pro­teins, enzymes, and highly pur­i­fied molecules in dried or liquid formulations.