Amyris highlights progress in Total and Cosan partnerships

Amyris announced today three important milestones underscoring its continued, focused execution with respect to its collaborations and partnerships.

1. Amyris has received confirmation Total will provide $30 million of funding to Amyris by July 2013, as anticipated in the revised collaboration agreement announced last year. In addition, as a result of the continued success of Amyris’s existing technology collaboration with Total, the two parties intend to form a joint venture company by mid-2013 to market renewable diesel, jet fuel, and other specialty products derived from Biofene®, Amyris’s renewable brand of farnesene.

2. Amyris and Cosan have entered into definitive agreements to expand their joint venture, Novvi, to include renewable additives and finished lubricants for industrial, commercial and automotive uses in addition to the joint venture’s original scope of renewable, base oils for such markets. Amyris plans to supply Biofene to Novvi for finishing into final products until the joint venture builds its own farnesene production capacity.

3. Amyris has met the technical milestones at its production plant in Brazil to satisfy the conditions for a follow-on common stock investment of $5 million from its existing investor, Biolding Investment SA. The $5 million Amyris received last week represented the final tranche of Biolding’s preexisting contractual obligation to fund $15 million upon satisfaction of certain performance conditions at Amyris’s Biofene plant.

“Amyris is delivering on a track-record of focused execution and collaboration. We continue to meet or exceed the technical milestones for our collaboration with Total and work closely to commercialize products under the Amyris-Total fuels joint venture,” said John Melo, Amyris President & Chief Executive Officer.

“With Cosan, we have expanded the scope of our joint venture’s product portfolio beyond base oils to a range of industrial, commercial, and automotive additives and lubricants derived from Biofene. And, thanks to the successful performance of our first industrial-scale farnesene production facility in Brazil, we met the conditions for an additional investment from one of our leading stockholders,” added Melo.

Further details about the terms and conditions of these agreements are included in the relevant regulatory filings, including Amyris’s annual report on Form 10-K filed last week.

About Amyris, Inc.
Amyris is an integrated renewable products company focused on providing sustainable alternatives to a broad range of petroleum-sourced products. Amyris uses its industrial synthetic biology platform to convert plant sugars into a variety of molecules – flexible building blocks that can be used in a wide range of products. Amyris’s initial portfolio of commercial products is based on Biofene®, Amyris’s brand of renewable farnesene, a long-chain hydrocarbon. Amyris is commercializing these products both as No Compromise® renewable ingredients in cosmetics, flavors and fragrances, polymers, lubricants and consumer products, and also as No Compromise renewable diesel and jet fuel. Amyris Brasil Ltda., a subsidiary of Amyris, oversees the establishment and expansion of Amyris’s production in Brazil.