PARTEQ launching centre to commercialize green chemistry technologies and processes

Second CECR competition

PARTEQ Innovations has secured federal funding for a centre to exploit so-called green chemistry, as part of the second competition of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program. The commercialization arm of Queen's Univ received $9.1 million over five years to establish GreenCentre Canada (GCC) which will have a $40 million budget covering the same timeframe.

GCC will be located in Queen's Innovation Park with a staff of 15 and facilities that will be used by academic researchers and their industrial partners to add value to promising green chemistry technologies and processes emerging from Queen's and universities across Canada. The GCC's commercialization model was developed by PARTEQ and has never been implemented until now.

"This is a new model of technology transfer. It's actually business development bringing in discoveries from across the country. For industry, we're bringing them back to the discovery stage," says PARTEQ president and CEO John Molloy. "We're changing the technology push to market pull really early in the discovery cycle."

Adding to GCC's potential is the participation of Dr Philip Jessop, who will serve as its technical director. A Queen's professor of chemistry, Jessop is a world renowned chemist, a holder of a Canada Research Chair in green chemistry and winner of the 2008 John C Polanyi Award. Jessop's primary task will be to determine which technologies being considered make technical sense and are truly green.

Molloy says PARTEQ has built up technology transfer and commercialization infrastructure that is larger than what is required to handle deal flow for Queen's and he jumped at the chance to tap into discoveries from other institutions. In 2006, PARTEQ was awarded $2.2 million to expand its reach across the Eastern Ontario region through the Ontario Research and Commercialization Program (ORCP), a three-year, $31.4-million fund established by the provincial government. For the CECR competition, green chemistry was chosen as an area with the greatest potential as it drew on strengths at Queen's and other universities and corresponded to priorities chosen by both the federal and Ontario governments.

"We had to go outside for deal flow and we ... started thinking about narrowing chemistry to a green focus. Our most productive department (at Queen's) is probably chemistry ... There's enough resident pipeline to harness the rest of green chemistry research capacity across the country," says Molloy. "Every university lacks commercialization infrastructure to do this kind of work to the point where companies will take it on. They need the capacity and the people and now we have it."

PARTEQ projects that GCC will become self-sufficient at the end of its five-year CECR funding (a condition of the program) and will manage the commercialization of 50 green chemistry technologies including at least 10 licence agreements and six start-up companies.

"They're based on the number of disclosures that are worked up through the development cycle. How many are likely to succeed," says Molloy.

early industry support

Nine companies (who can't be identified until contract arrangements are finalized) have already joined GCC, representing different points along the chemical value chain ,from mineral resource extraction to consumer goods manufacturing. While the number is just short of PARTEQ's target of 10, Molloy says the response was encouraging given the economic challenges facing industry. GCC plans to launch operations by the fourth quarter of 2009 once its infrastructure is in place and hiring is complete.

"It's a difficult time to go out and look for industrial sponsors. A lot were re-evaluating their non-discretionary spending," he says. "Part of this initiative is to re-invigorate Canadian chemical companies."

GCC's inaugural executive director is Dr Rui Resendes, an industry veteran of Sarnia's chemical valley and director of PARTEQ's commercial development in chemistry and materials. He is responsible for the business aspects of GCC, including the development of business cases for promising technologies.

GCC facilities will allow Resendes' team to evaluate technologies and demonstrate that they result in a lower environmental footprint than existing technologies and are fiscally green.

"Fiscally green means a reduction in process steps and cost savings, allowing companies to tap into green innovation across the country," he says. "Green chemistry is hot because it needs to be. To maintain or expand our quality of life in North America would take too much resources unless we do it differently. Chemistry is everywhere in all technical disciplines."

In fact, chemistry is the world's single largest manufacturing sector accounting for 3% of global GDP.

collaboration with sarnia-based cecr

GCC is hoping to bolster its commercialization impact through an alliance with a CECR that was funded in the program's first competition. The Bioindustrial Innovation Centre (BIC) in Sarnia offers expertise and services that complement GCC's capabilities further down the development chain (R$, February 25/08).

Resendes says the two Centres offer a powerful solution for firms seeking to move discoveries from university labs to the marketplace.

"It's a nice complement. We pick up activities right after the discovery stage and do the product and applications development and initial scale-up. They're now tied to business opportunities," says Resendes. "But often development needs larger scale-up capability and Sarnia is equipped to do that. The biospace is a sub-set of green and Sarnia is a big chemical centre."

Most projects taken on by GCC will reside at the Centre for three to five years before they're ready for commercial play. It will then be decided whether licensing or start-up is the best way to proceed.

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