Businessweek

Metabolix, Inc., a bioscience company, develops and commercializes environmentally friendly solutions to the plastics, chemicals, and energy industries. The company is developing four-carbon (C4) and three-carbon (C3) chemicals from biobased sources, not the fossil feedstocks that are used to produce most industrial chemicals. In 2011, the company and CJ CheilJedang (CJ) announced a joint development agreement to dvance and refine its production technology and assess investment options for the commercialization of biobased C4 chemicals via fermentation. The company’s third technology platform, crop-based businesses, which is at an early stage, is a biorefinery system, which uses plant crops to co-produce PHAs that can be recovered as bioplastics or converted to biobased chemicals and also generating bioenergy or biofuels in an integrated biorefinery. Competition Biodegradable: The company’s competitors include BASF; Dupont; ShowaDenko; Mitsubishi Chemical; Kaneka; Tianan; Tianjin; EcoMann; NatureWorks; Mitsui Chemical; Novamont; and Biome. Non-biodegradable: The company competes with Dupont; Dow Chemical; Arkema; and Braskem. History Metabolix, Inc. was founded in 1992.