The Department of Defense has selected the last nine awardees for the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program, which aims to boost U.S. bioeconomic strengths and help the DOD generate more sophisticated defense capabilities.
The chosen bioindustrial companies include Amyris, Cauldron Molecules, Checkerspot, DSM Nutritional Products, EVERY Company, The Fynder Group, Liberation Labs, Perfect Day and Solugen. They will receive funding to develop business and technical plans for building domestic bioindustrial manufacturing production facilities, the DOD said Thursday.
Preparing for New Industrial Revolution
According to Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of research and engineering at the DOD, the selected firms will advance the U.S. objective of establishing a network of large-scale production facilities to fortify the country’s chemical supply chain and prepare the U.S. bioeconomy for expansion. “The next industrial revolution will be a biomanufacturing revolution,” the Wash100 Award recipient noted.
Bioindustrial Manufacturing Facilities
Under the program, the companies will submit proposals under the Defense Industrial Base Consortium other transaction agreement, a contract vehicle supervised by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy. Following evaluation, the proposed projects could receive up to $100 million in funding to construct bioindustrial manufacturing facilities in the United States.
The latest awardees will join the 25 companies selected earlier for the initial stage of DBIMP investment worth more than $60 million.
