H&R USA makes equity investment in Novvi, producer of renewable base oils
H&R USA, a company of The Hansen & Rosenthal Group, of Hamburg (Germany) has made an equity investment in Novvi LLC, a joint venture of Amyris, Inc., Cosan S.A., American Refining Group (ARG) and Chevron USA. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Since launching first commercial production in 2014, Novvi has been steadily increasing its renewable base oil manufacturing to keep up with robust and growing demand for a variety of automotive and industrial lubricant applications.
“We are delighted to have H&R join Novvi as a strategic investor. H&R’s partnership continues to demonstrate that the global base oil market has a requirement for and acceptance of Novvi technology,” said Jeff Brown, Novvi LLC’s CEO. “As we continue to increase our global market penetration, H&R’s deep know-how of the process oil business and its application development capability further enhance our growth plan.”
“We are pleased that H&R, a company with a long tradition as a global innovator with hundreds of oil and wax based specialty products has joined with Novvi to support further growth in renewable products to meet growing consumer demand for high performance and sustainably sourced products,” said John Melo, Amyris’ president and CEO. “This demand continues to contribute to our strong revenue growth and to support our mission of accelerating the transition to high performance, sustainably sourced products.”
“The Novvi partnership will provide us with access to high-performance renewable base oils, which is well aligned with what our customers are looking for: best performance plus renewable and sustainable,” said Niels H. Hansen, chairman of the executive board at H&R. “Novvi’s technology creates new possibilities for longer-term product development with H&R and its customers — renewable and sustainable chemistry that can grow the market for the future,” he said.
The Hansen & Rosenthal Group is a specialty chemical company which develops and manufactures crude oil-based chemical and pharmaceutical products. The H&R Group in Germany and its affiliated companies are a worldwide sales network with refineries and specialty product plants at the service of its customers to cover their needs in products like white oils, wax emulsions, paraffin, plasticizing oils.
Novvi LLC is the market leader in renewable lubricants and is a joint venture of Amyris, Inc., American Refining Group, Inc., Cosan S.A. Industria e Comercio and Chevron USA. Novvi produces targeted hydrocarbon molecules from plant sugar for automotive, industrial, marine, and construction applications.
