Myriant Technologies Inc., a Quincy company looking to develop and manufacture bio-based chemicals for use as the chemical building blocks for polymers and plastics, announced the closing of a $60 million strategic equity investment from a petrochemical producer in Thailand.
The producer is the PTT Chemical Group. Myriant said it plans to use some of the money to build a plant in Louisiana that will initially ferment grain sorghum into succinic acid, which can be used as a substitute to fossil-fuel derived chemicals in the making of polymers and plastics. The plant in Lake Providence, La., is expected to go online sometime in the first half of 2012.
The investment includes the signing of an agreement for establishing a joint venture between PTT Chemical and Myriant that calls for the deploying of Myriant’s technology in Southeast Asia, Myriant said in a press release.
Privately held Myriant currently employs about 60 people, most of them divided between the company’s headquarters in Quincy and a research-and-development facility in Woburn.
Globe Staff