DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products Celebrates 10 Years of Bio-based Performance

It was ten years ago this month that DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products announced the first commercial shipments of a breakthrough biomaterial, bio-based 1,3-propanediol. Four years later it announced an expansion increasing capacity by 35 percent at its facility in Loudon, Tennessee. Today with thousands of customers around the globe and products in most major consumer and industrial market segments, DuPont Tate & Lyle celebrates a decade of offering higher-performing ingredients from a petroleum-free, sustainable and renewable source.

“This joint venture started as a revolutionary innovation project that applied the tools of modern biotechnology to make high-performance biomaterials in a much more sustainable way than traditional petro-chemistry,” stated Michael Saltzberg, global business director of biomaterials for DuPont. “Its track record of success has inspired the academic and industrial science community around the world to invest in industrial biotech and is a case study of how to successfully innovate in this space.

“Our partnership with DuPont is a great example of bringing the best of two organizations together to create a first to market product and process that continues to demonstrate versatility and functionality in the global marketplace,” said Greg Wenndt, vice president and general manager, industrial starch and bioventures, Tate & Lyle. “We are proud of the success we’ve built together and share our congratulations with our DuPont partners and the DuPont Tate & Lyle teams around the world for achieving a decade of great work and continued innovation.”

By bringing together the unrivaled track record of DuPont’s research and development with Tate & Lyle’s industry-leading fermentation expertise, scientists and engineers from this joint venture developed a proprietary process that uses plant-based feedstocks to produce bio-based 1,3-propanediol. Today the joint venture provides solutions for a wide variety of markets and applications through its bio-based performance brands Susterra® and Zemea® propanediol in addition to Bio-PDO™, the key ingredient for DuPont™ Sorona® high-performance polymers.

“We’ve grown past what was previously imagined,” explained Todd Sutton, president, DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products. “The versatility of the product allows us to support the DuPont™ Sorona® fiber business as well as grow organically with Zemea® and Susterra® propanediol. The benefits of creating high-performing solutions in combination with renewability allows us to continue to expand our market reach in the personal care, food, polyurethanes and heat transfer fluids markets as well as many other applications”

Zemea® propanediol is a multifunctional, preservative-boosting humectant and ingredient that delivers high performance in a variety of consumer applications, from cosmetics and personal care to food, flavor, and pharmaceuticals, and laundry and household cleaning.

Susterra® propanediol is the building block that delivers high performance in a variety of applications, from polyurethanes and unsaturated polyester resins to heat-transfer fluids.

About Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle is a global provider of ingredients and solutions to the food, beverage and other industries, with operations in over 30 locations worldwide. Tate & Lyle is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol TATE.L. American Depositary Receipts trade under TATYY. In the year to 31 March 2016, Tate & Lyle sales totaled £2.4 billion.

About DuPont

DuPont – one of the first companies to publicly establish environmental goals more than 20 years ago – has broadened its sustainability commitments beyond internal footprint reduction to include market-driven targets for both revenue and research and development investment. The goals are tied directly to business growth, specifically to the development of safer and environmentally improved new products for key global markets.

About DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products

DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products is a joint venture between DuPont, a global science company, and Tate & Lyle, a world-leading specialty ingredients and solutions company. DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products provides natural and renewably sourced ingredients that enhance product performance.