Cellibre, a leader in sustainable biomanufacturing, announced today a $1.5 million award from the Department of Defense (DoD) as part of the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP), which seeks to strengthen domestic supply chains and sustain America's global prominence in biotechnology. The DBIMP will execute these investments through the Defense Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) Other Transaction Agreement (OTA).
“Over the last 20 years, globalization has had amazing benefits for society, including lower prices and greater access to a tremendous amount of goods and services,” said Ben Chiarelli, CEO of Cellibre. “However, the unintended consequences of this are that many of our critical supply chains are extremely fragmented, relying too heavily on foreign production and resources. In good times, we do not realize the many points of failure and risk as consumers. In turbulent times, however, like we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, the fragility of globalization becomes apparent. Establishing domestic chemical production and becoming ‘chemical independent’ is no longer a nice to have, it is a national security imperative.”
A report published in April 2024 by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) highlights the shift that has occurred in global chemical production since the 1990s. Of importance, in 2022, China accounted for forty-four (44) percent of global chemical production, up from five (5) percent in 1995. China also accounted for approximately forty-six (46) percent of global capital investment in chemical production in 2022. This is, in part, because China is already the largest chemicals market in the world, giving Chinese producers a key advantage in their home market as well as the ability to drive down pricing globally with economies of scale. While this nearly fifty (50) percent of global market share may seem high, in actuality, the percentage of chemicals that rely on this Chinese production is much larger. Chemical supply chains are deeply interconnected and reliant on multiple inputs and various producers, and can be very complex. Absent coherent policy responses by Western nations, their share of chemical production will likely fall significantly and become even more dependent on these global supply chains.
Cellibre’s initial strategic focus is to change the way natural products, specifically plant-based compounds, are manufactured. Agricultural production of these compounds is riddled with complications and more importantly, for critical supply chains, agricultural processes are not rapid enough to meet demand spikes in real time. Natural products are mostly known for their uses in functional foods, clean beauty, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and general wellness products. However, many of nature’s ingredients have industrial uses, including many of the chemicals in Cellibre’s portfolio. As an example, several natural products are monomers and can be utilized to produce advantaged thermal-setting resins, certain polymers, and energetics.
“The state of the global chemical supply chain and our reliance on other nations highlights perfectly why the initiatives being put forward by DoD are so critical, not only to national security but also to personal security,” said Dr. Nicky Caiazza, Cellibre’s Chief Scientific Officer. “Utilizing biomanufacturing presents an enormous opportunity to leverage the unique and world-class agricultural assets in the United States to provide the inputs to produce chemicals domestically, without the need for complex supply chains or reliance on foreign manufacturing. At Cellibre, we have built our technologies to achieve lower cost and higher quality than the legacy production methods we look to displace. This means better, cheaper, and more resilient supply chains for our customers, our government partners, and, most importantly, taxpayers.”
About the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program
Following a competitive evaluation of proposed solutions, the Department entered negotiations with more than 30 selectees for business and technical planning efforts across focus areas for defense materials: fabrication, firepower, fitness, food, and fuel. Upon completion of planning efforts, businesses are eligible to enter negotiations to proceed to the next phase of the DBIMP under the DIBC, wherein the DoD will support building bioproduction infrastructure that increases the domestic supply of critical materials.
About Cellibre
Cellibre is a manufacturing technology company that employs an organism-agnostic approach to turn cells into specialized, sustainable factories for the manufacture of globally significant products at scale. Cellibre’s world-class scientific team has led programs from ideation to commercialization, pioneering revolutionary breakthroughs in energy, ingredients, medicines, and more. The company’s initial strategic focus is deploying our expertise to enable the production of high-value natural products and bioactives, alleviating the need for agriculture and revolutionizing the way these ingredients and chemicals are sourced, produced, and consumed.
Cellibre was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
For more information visit www.cellibre.com or reach us by emailing contact@cellibre.com
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SOURCE: Cellibre Inc.
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