“Since our initial investment last year, Cemvita has made outstanding progress, including opening their new pilot plant – an important step towards producing sustainable aviation fuel,” said United Airlines Ventures President Michael Leskinen. “United is the global aviation leader in SAF production investment, but we face a real shortage of available fuel and producers. Cemvita’s technology represents a path forward for a potentially significant supply of SAF and it’s our hope that this offtake agreement for up to one billion gallons is just the beginning of our collaboration.”
Game Changing Technologies: Commercialized SAF is currently made from used cooking oil and agricultural waste. Cemvita's technology has the potential to provide more reliable feedstock production with minimal land, water, and electricity needs. Furthermore, the output of eCO2 plants has the potential to be carbon-negative and Cemvita is aiming to be cost competitive with existing crop based HEFA feedstocks and fuels, which is a crucial factor for the successful adoption of any new biomanufacturing process.
“Biology is capable of truly amazing things,” said Moji Karimi, CEO of Cemvita. “Our team of passionate, pioneering, and persistent scientists and engineers are on a mission to create sustainable BioSolutions that redefine possibilities.”
“We are thrilled to partner with United Airlines in working towards transforming the aviation industry and accelerating the energy transition,” Moji continued. “This agreement featuring our unique SAF platform is a major milestone towards demonstrating our journey to full commercialization.”
United has aggressively pursued strategic investments in SAF producers and revolutionary technologies, including carbon capture, hydrogen-electric engines, electric regional aircraft, and air taxis. This year, United launched its UAV Sustainable Flight FundSM, a first-of-its-kind investment vehicle that is designed to leverage support from cross-industry businesses to support start-ups focused on decarbonizing air travel through SAF research, technology, and production. Cemvita was announced as part of the fund’s inaugural group of portfolio companies. United has invested in more SAF production than any other airline globally.1
1Based on publicly announced airline offtake agreements for future purchases of SAF.
Cemvita is on a mission to create the natural resource industry of the future. Our solutions address sustainable natural extraction of natural resources, carbon negative chemical production, and the closed-loop renewal of waste as feedstock. With Cemvita, the sustainable choice is also the economical choice. Whether it’s metal and mineral extraction or the production of hydrogen and biofuels, Cemvita partners with the world's largest companies to accelerate the energy transition.
The Cemvita platform is flexible and designed to produce reliable results in harsh operating environments. The microbes we engineer at Cemvita can fully decarbonize the most intensive industrial processes and massively shrink their overall environmental footprint. Our field-tested biotechnologies can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows and infrastructure.
