![\"\"](\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2025\/02\/The-Danish-bio-producer-that-made-it-in-China-1.webp\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe global face of Danish biotech<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u201c<\/strong>The time for biosolutions is now,\u201d announces the Novonesis website.<\/a> The Danish company specialises in enzymes, enjoying an almost 50 per cent global market share in this specialist commodity, as well as industrial microorganisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enzymes may be a low-volume product compared to other biomaterials but it is found in almost every industry. Novonesis produces enzymes for use in edible proteins, food ingredients, household care, cleaning, medicine and health, and agricultural inputs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s story began in the 1920s when the Pedersen brothers left their employer Nordisk to form a competitor firm Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium. Nordisk and Novo merged in 1989 into the behemoth Novo Nordisk. In 1989 Novonesis, known as Novozymes until January 2024, split from the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As well as being one of the biggest European enzyme producers, Novonesis is a key example of a truly global company, with subsidiaries in countries across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As one of the earliest Western biotech firms to set up in China, Novonesis\u2019 presence there is a major part of this success. The company currently holds about 2,200 patents and 800 trademarks in China\u2019s biotech sector and 1000 employees across six sites in the country. Novonesis opened its latest office in China just in October 2024 in Guangzhou, an exceptional mark of confidence in the market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Novozymes,<\/a> as it was then known, had a presence in Beijing since the early 1990s. It was only in 1997 that it finally established a Chinese subsidiary. From there, the company rode the coattails of the country\u2019s economic boom, one that reshaped global trade over the next decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Novozymes early on also saw China\u2019s potential as a booming consumer market for renewables products just as growth, urbanisation, and industrialisation were accelerating there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have developed together with China\u2019s opening-up,\u201d said Graziela Chaluppe dos Santos Malucelli, a senior vice president at Novozymes in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company also selected China for its large and under-utilised biomass resource pool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite intensive urbanisation since then, China still has a huge agricultural and forestry sector and its byproducts from these sectors are among the biggest in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the late 2000s, Novonesis expanded its presence in the country by participating in collaborative projects with local firms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Novonesis initially saw great potential in China\u2019s cellulosic biofuels market. In the late 2000s, it linked up with China Resources Alcohol Corporation to collaborate on R&D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This state-owned company offered Novonesis benefits such as its connections with research centres around the country. A key benefit of breaking into the Chinese biochemicals ecosystem was access to a strong pool of highly trained scientists at a lower cost than in Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Partnering with local firms remains part of the company\u2019s strategic blueprint for other emerging markets along the biofuels and biochemicals supply chain such as Brazil and India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Novonesis basic business mission in China remains effectively the same as it did when it started there: to develop ways of turning low-value local agricultural waste into high value materials using proprietary processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Novoensis\u2019 strategy in China from the start has been to finely tune its product range to local market needs \u2013 in short, this means serving the development priorities of the Chinese government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An overarching preoccupation in the Chinese Communist Party almost since its founding has been resource security and reducing import dependence for key goods. Novonesis slots neatly into the Chinese government\u2019s continued push to maximise domestic resources. A large biochemicals industry can mop up huge amounts of agricultural byproduct, displacing the need for costly imports in oil or other raw materials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The biochemicals producer is shaping up to play a key role within the Chinese government\u2019s new economic development strategy centering around \u2018high quality industry\u2019. If China made its name as the factory of the world for cheap goods in the 2000s, it now wants to build out more advanced manufacturing capabilities focused on higher-value industries: among them, biotech and biomanufacturing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from China\u2019s ambition to dominate in emerging industries such as biotech, Novonesis products are also attractive for a state now aiming to ease its dependence on food imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy China?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Meeting China\u2019s needs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n