Materia, Inc. and Cargill have announced two significant advancements in their joint effort to use Materia's proprietary olefin metathesis technology for converting biobased oils to industrial chemical feedstocks and consumer products. At the 16th International Symposium on Olefin Metathesis and Related Chemistry in Poznan, Poland, Materia disclosed that the companies' efforts, funded in part by a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant for ethenolysis development, have already achieved 15-fold improvement in the turnover number of catalysts for this reaction when compared to previously published levels. Advancement in catalyst performance is a focus of the efforts under the DOE grant and is considered a critical factor in successful creation of the oilseed biorefinery concepts envisioned by the companies and DOE. In addition, Materia and Cargill also announced the successful commercial scale production of a proprietary product for Cargill's internal utilization. "We are very pleased with the rapid advancements being made by combining Cargill and Materia's technologies to develop and commercialize bio-based products," said Jim Stoppert, senior director of Cargill's Industrial BioProducts development group. "The DOE grant sparked an expanded collaboration that led to the first commercial product well ahead of what any of us envisioned when we began this effort. We believe this will rapidly grow into an important product area for us and the marketplace."

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