Allylix Raises $18.2M for Renewable Production of Aroma Chemicals

[Corrected 3/12/12, 11:35 pm to show total investment of $18.2 million.] Germany’s BASF Venture Capital has invested $13.5 million in a financing round that raised a total of $18.2 million for Allylix, the San Diego-based renewable chemicals startup that uses fermentation technology and genetically engineered yeast to produce specialized flavor and fragrance chemicals.

Also participating in the round were existing investors Avrio Ventures, Cultivian Ventures, and London-based agribusiness company Tate & Lyle, according to a statement today. Tate & Lyle also has been a significant backer of Genomatica, another San Diego renewable chemicals startup.

Allylix was founded in 2004 to advance its technology for making terpenes, a group of complex hydrocarbon chemicals typically used as flavor and fragrance enhancers. The first product introduced by the company was nootkatone, which has a keen grapefruit taste and smell. Nootkatone previously was extracted from grapefruit peels in a process that can run as much as $4,000 per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds).

“This round of funding will support the development and delivery of new compounds in Allylix’s pipeline, and will allow us to expand the market for our existing products,” Allylix CEO Carolyn Fritz says in today’s statement.

Daniela Proske of BASF Venture Capital America says Allylix “has demonstrated the ability to produce high-quality products at scalable commercial quantities and at a lower price point, which is one of several compelling reasons to invest in Allylix.”

As Fritz explained in 2010, terpenes comprise a huge class of hydrocarbon molecules, including hundreds of thousands of scent and flavor compounds produced in nature. But the complex structure of the molecules make them extremely difficult to synthesize using conventional chemistry.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.