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Breville Group, a global designer and manufacturer of small kitchen appliances will purchase and market Cardia's compostable "juicer bags" as part of its Juicer accessory offering to consumers. Cardia announced that Breville Group Limited, one among the global designers and manufacturers of small kitchen appliances will purchase and market Cardia's compostable "juicer bags" as part of its Juicer accessory offering to consumers. The agreement is expected to generate strong sales for Cardia and the launch follows on from Cardia's ASX announcement made on the 21st of August 2012. Breville is a leader in juicer sales and has launched the compostable "juicer bags" in packs of 30, for sale. Breville's launch in the USA has implemented the 100% compostable "the Clean & Green™" juicer pulp bag, with its Juice Fountain® range of juice extractors to encourage environmentally-friendly waste disposal practices. Breville'

BioSolar, Inc., developer of breakthrough products and materials that reduce the cost of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules, recently announced that it has received its first commercial BioBacksheet order. The first shipment of BioBacksheet will be used for the manufacture of specialty PV panels for electric utility vehicles with anticipated further shipments to be used by military and other mobile applications. The customer's PV panels feature lightweight, high-power-to-weight ratio, highly durable, customizable shapes, sizes and colors. Dr. David Lee, the company's CEO commented, "This first commercial order marks an important event in the history of our company. In spite of recent turmoil in the solar market, we have found success. Customers are attracted to the unique product features of BioBacksheet, including single layer composition, reliability, efficiency and cost competitiveness. Though the sales cycle for specialty PV panels can be shorter than mainstream PV

FibeRio, the developer and manufacturer of ground breaking Forcespinning® nanofiber production systems recently announced it has completed a $13M capital raise led by two global strategic investors — SABIC Ventures B.V., Saudi Basic Industries Corporation's corporate venture capital arm, and Aster Capital Partners, sponsored by Solvay, Schneider Electric, Alstom and the European investment fund. The funding will be used to accelerate the company's commercial growth, introduce larger scale production systems to the market and execute on a growing pipeline of orders and global opportunities with industry leading customers. "The support of two of the leading, knowledgeable strategic investors in this space, SABIC and Aster Capital, is a strong validation of the uniqueness of our Forcespinning technology and will help the company accelerate our growth, open new markets and enable new applications for all of our customers" commented Ellery Buchanan, CEO of FibeRio.

To support its research in metabolic engineering, Braskem has acquired a High Throughput Screening (HTS) system from the U.S. company Hamilton, one of the world leaders in the field of robotics. This robot is Hamilton's most modern in use in South America and the first ever in Brazil to be used for this application. The robot will be used in projects involving the genetic manipulation of microorganisms known as synthetic biology for the development of new renewable polymers. The HTS system will allow researchers' work to be multiplied by 100 to 1,000 times in the same period of time. To learn more details about the robot's operations, four Braskem researchers will receive special training in the United States. Hamilton also created a technical support team in Brazil especially to provide support for the HTS system. "The HTS system is yet another tool that will enable Braskem as well as Brazil to accelerate their development of competencies in biotechnology and

The European Commission will establish an observatory to map progress and measure the impact of the development of the European Union's bioeconomy, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn announced today. The observatory will gather data to follow the evolution of markets, to map EU, national and regional bioeconomy policies, research and innovation capacities, and the scale of related public and private investments. The observatory will be coordinated by the Joint Research Centre, the Commission's in-house science service. Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn said: "It's now one year since we launched our bioeconomy strategy. We are now seeing Member States seize the opportunity offered by the transition to a post-petroleum economy based on smart use of resources from land and sea. It's essential that they do because it will be good for our environment, our food and energy security, and for Europe's competitiveness in the

The Lubrizol Corporation announced recently its plans to increase its chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC) resin capacity through a joint investment in a manufacturing facility with Sekisui Chemical Company, Ltd. The new facility, which is part of the company's Phase I capacity expansion, will be located in Thailand and will enable Lubrizol to meet its global customer demands, particularly in Asia Pacific. Initial resin capacity during this first phase will be 30,000 metric tons with a total investment of approximately $50 million over a two-year period and with full operation planned by the end of 2014, subject to regulatory approvals. Phase I will be designed to allow for a future expansion as part of Phase II that will double the size of the plant to 60,000 metric tons with an additional investment of $50 million. The Phase II expansion is expected be operational by the end of 2016. Lubrizol recognizes the global growth potential for CPVC products and is committed to ensurin

Genomatica and DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products Company, LLC (DT&L) recently announced the first successful commercial-scale production of 1,4-Butanediol (BDO) using a bio-based manufacturing process. BDO is an intermediate chemical used in a wide variety of applications including athletic apparel, electronics and automotive applications. This campaign, which spanned five weeks in late 2012, produced more than five million pounds (over 2,000 metric tons) of BDO by direct fermentation using conventional sugars as feedstock. This marks the first time that BDO- with an existing worldwide market of billions of pounds per year — has been produced biologically on this scale and at this rate. This campaign was completed less than five years from when Genomatica first demonstrated the ability for a microorganism to produce BDO in 2008. "This was a sizable commercial-scale production campaign," said Christophe Schilling, Genomatica's Chief Executive Officer. "Partn