BioAmber announced Friday that its Sarnia joint venture with Mitsui & Co. has begun shipping bio-succinic acid to customers and is operating its manufacturing process at commercial scale, meeting a significant company milestone.

BioAmber has confirmed the performance of its proprietary yeast in the production fermenters in Sarnia. The fermentation performance achieved is significantly above the initial targets set for 2015, and the yield and productivity levels already exceed the targets the plant was designed to hit longer term, the company says.

The bio-succinic acid being produced is of higher quality than the product previously produced in the demonstration plant located in France.  

"The operational ramp-up is ongoing and our fermentation results have exceeded all expectations, offering us the prospect of better operating margins than we had originally projected," said Fabrice Orecchioni, BioAmber's chief operations officer. 

"We have a remarkable group of dedicated employees in the plant, supported by excellent engineers, and our decision to hire and train them well in advance of the startup is paying dividends," he added. "We are only a few weeks from commercial production, and our yeast has already proven to be operationally robust and efficient, and our purification process is producing the high quality bio-succinic acid that we expected."

Initial shipments have started to customers so they can confirm the quality of the bio-succinic acid produced in the Sarnia plant. Management expects the Sarnia plant to be in commercial operation later this month and to increase production volumes progressively to reach full capacity in 2017.