ATLANTA — Governor Brian P. Kemp announced March 29 that Danimer Scientific, a developer and manufacturer of biodegradable materials, plans to invest $700 million in expanding their Bainbridge manufacturing operations, nearly quadrupling their workforce in Decatur County. On March 16, Danimer and Mars-Wrigley announced a partnership to develop an innovative home compostable packaging, with SKITTLES as the brand’s first product to use the new packaging.
Headquartered in Bainbridge for over a decade, Danimer currently employs more than 100 people in southwest Georgia. The company’s renewable and sustainable biopolymers are used in single-use and other plastic products. These materials are biodegradable and compostable and are used by clients in industries like food packaging, bottling, and other traditional packaging sectors. Applications for Danimer’s biopolymers include additives, aqueous coatings, fibers, filaments, films, hot-melt adhesives, and injection-molded articles.
Danimer expects to construct an additional 2,000,000-square-foot facility near their current 25-acre campus, located at 140 Industrial Boulevard in Bainbridge. The company will hire for technical positions and careers in production, maintenance, and management. Individuals interested in opportunities with Danimer are encouraged to visit www.DanimerScientific.com for additional information.
Market demand remains robust for Danimer’s signature polymer, Nodax PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a 100% biodegradable, renewable, and sustainable plastic produced using canola oil as a primary feedstock. Expanding commitments from blue-chip multinational consumer packaging customers support Danimer’s announced nameplate capacity additions to collectively produce and deliver up to an estimated 315 million pounds of finished PHA product per year.
Today the company announced that it plans to double the anticipated capacity of its previously disclosed greenfield facility from 125 million to 250 million finished pounds of PHA products annually. To be located in Bainbridge, GA, the new state-of-the-art facility is currently in the pre-construction engineering stage, and we expect to break ground in the first quarter of 2022. The greenfield capacity will come online in two phases, with an initial three fermenters expected to be operational in mid-2023 and the second set of three fermenters anticipated to come online in early 2024. Based on the current demand pipeline, the Company continues to forecast that capacity at the greenfield plant will be sold out.
“Georgia has been a welcoming home for Danimer since the company’s inception, and we are grateful for the opportunity to continue growing our roots in the region,” said Stephen Croskrey, CEO of Danimer Scientific. “With access to the state’s robust logistics infrastructure and top-notch talent coming from local universities, we are in a strong position to make our vision of replacing traditional plastic with 100% renewable and biodegradable alternatives a reality. We could not be more pleased with the growing commitments to sustainable solutions by multinational companies, which has allowed us to double the planned size of this new facility.”
Winchester, Kentucky Facility Expansion Update
The Winchester, KY facility is currently producing and shipping PHA at a commercial scale. In 2020, Danimer completed Phase I of its two-phase facility expansion, adding 20 million pounds of nameplate production capacity for the manufacture of PHA-based finished product. The facility started production runs in March 2020. The production ramp was negatively impacted by the COVID pandemic as well as the Company’s decision to conserve cash given the uncertainty in the economy. We are continuing to increase production volume at this facility. Building on this initial success, Phase II of the expansion is in process to bring the plant to its anticipated full capacity of 65 million finished pounds annually. Based on the timing of the completion of the merger with Live Oak, the construction of the Phase II expansion began in December 2020 and is now expected to come online in the second quarter of 2022.