DSM Makes Moves in Green Biotechnology

At a plenary session of the 2011 World Congress on Industry Biotechnology and Bio-Processing, held in Toronto, Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM N.V. (Heerlen, Netherlands), received the George Washington Carver Award for innovation in industrial biotechnology.

In his keynote address, Sijbesma spoke of the potential for biotechnology to revolutionize modern culture through providing food and energy from plant materials. An excerpt from his speech has been preserved in its original form:

Biotechnology of the future can possibly allow us to produce from plant materials, both human food, by extracting nutritional high quality human food proteins, as well as biomaterials, bio-chemicals and bioenergy (fuels and gas).

DSM also announced a new partnership with Roquette Fréres (Lestrem, France) to begin commercial manufacturing of bio-based succinic acid in Italy and a new breakthrough in yeast production for second generation biofuels.