Origin Materials introduces asset light strategy to scale biomass conversion technology

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 June 3, 2024

Origin Materials, the world’s leading carbon negative materials company with a mission to enable the world’s transition to sustainable materials, announced financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2023.

“For Origin, 2023 was a watershed year, which included the commencement of production at Origin 1, a key milestone in proving the scalability of our biomass conversion technology,” said Rich Riley, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Origin.

“Furthermore, we made great progress on initiatives that significantly de-risk the business on the path to profitability. Indeed, today we are pleased to announce that, owing to the strong momentum of these initiatives, we now have a path to profitability entirely independent of the scale-up of our biomass conversion technology and related manufacturing plant construction.

“These initiatives are led by our all-PET caps and closures business, a highly differentiated solution for the over $65 billion caps and closures market. With expected 2024 cash burn of less than $65 million and our expectation for significant gross profit generation from caps and closures beginning in 2025 with a healthy growth trajectory thereafter, we forecast a continued reduction in our net cash burn while maintaining a solid minimum cash floor on our way to sustained profitability, and hence the expectation that we will not require additional equity capital.

“Regarding Origin 2, we are launching an ‘asset light’ strategy for core technology scale-up: Beyond Origin 1, we intend to scale our biomass conversion technology in partnership with other major companies. With potential strategic partners to provide a substantial portion of construction capital, Origin’s costs are expected to be reduced significantly, enhancing our optionality with respect to the ways we deploy our technology,” he continued.

“Notwithstanding the industry-wide capital construction project setbacks experienced over the past few years due to inflation, higher interest rates, and supply-chain shocks, the demand for our biomass conversion technology remains strong,” said John Bissell, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Origin.

“As such, I am particularly proud of our team’s innovation agility in accelerating caps and closures to become our primary path to profitability, which allows us greater flexibility to implement our asset light strategy. We are bringing cost-effective recycling circularity to a greater than $65 billion market, highly aligned with our mission to support the world’s transition to sustainable materials. PET is an excellent material for caps and familiar to consumers through the number ‘1’ recycling symbol. Our patent-pending PET caps and closures are a breakthrough for the industry. For a wide variety of containers our technology enables the lightest cap, reducing plastic waste and improving sustainability. They perform better than today’s HDPE and PP caps in ways that can improve product shelf life and are designed for circularity. Commercialization progress has been exceptional and multiple leading CPG companies have conducted extensive diligence and are in the letter of intent phase with our team,” he noted.

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