Butamax: Portrait of a Biobutanol Strategic Investment by BP and Dupont

Biofuels Digest
April 27, 2010 Jim Lane

As with our portrait yesterday of strategic investor Waste Management, BP and Dupont have been repeatedly the news with a series of investments in renewable energy technologies in the past 5 years.

Both companies have seemingly mastered the joint venture - reportedly so difficult that “nobody knows what doing a second one is like, because once you’ve done one you never want to do another,” according to one Digest-subscribing wag. Yet BP has JVs with Verenium for cellulosic ethanol and Dupont for the biobutanol venture known as Butamax, while Dupont has the additional JV with Danisco in Dupont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol.

“Alliances are in our DNA,” former Dupont chairman Chad Holiday once told the Digest — so how exactly do they work? How does a joint venture deliver value across the value chain.

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