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Richmond’s Butylfuel merges with U.K. firm

January 20, 2012
John Reid Blackwell / Richmond Times-Dispatch

A renewable-chemicals and biofuels company with offices in the Dominion Resources GreenTech Incubator in Ashland has merged with a United Kingdom-based industrial biotechnology company.

Virginia-based Butylfuel Inc. announced Thursday that it completed a merger with Green Biologics Ltd. on Jan. 1. The all-equity deal involved no cash, but transfers of stock ownership.

The combined company is operating under the Green Biologics Inc. name and is based in Abingdon, England. In the U.S., the company will maintain its office in Ashland, where three executives work, and a laboratory and pilot plant in Gahanna, Ohio.

The company is focused on developing and producing chemicals and fuels including butanol, using renewable feedstocks such as agricultural byproducts from sugar cane, forest materials and grasses.

Butanol is used as a chemical feedstock in making paints, coatings, inks and adhesives, an $85 billion global market, and plastics, a $700 billion global market. A longer-term goal for the company is to commercialize biobutanol as a substitute for gasoline.

"Our business model is to design, own and operate butanol facilities," said Joel Stone, formerly chief executive officer of Butylfuel Inc., now president of Green Biologics' North American business and global vice president of engineering. Its pilot plant in suburban Columbus, Ohio, produces butanol.

The merger of the companies combines Butylfuel's North American business platform with Green Biologics' global reach. The company has operations in China, India and Brazil.

One of the reasons the merged company is maintaining the Ashland office is because of Virginia's forest resources, Stone said.

"Ultimately the ideal feedstock for producing biobutanol is to move into forest resources, and there is nothing larger than the forest resources we have in Virginia," he said.

The Dominion Resources GreenTech Incubator helps support emerging firms in the alternative energy sector. The incubator provides space and business services for energy technology and service companies.

 

Copyright Richmond Times-Dispatch. Used by permission.

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