Amyris Announces Collaboration Agreement With COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute of China

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Feb. 29, 2016 -- Amyris, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMRS), the industrial bioscience company, today announced a collaboration partnership with COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute Co Ltd. ("COFCO NHRI"), a 100% owned subsidiary of China National Cereals, Oils, and Foodstuff Corporation ("COFCO"). The agreement calls for Amyris to provide improved strains via its high-performance HI-RYSE™ (Hyper-Integration for Rapid Yeast Strain Engineering) technology for COFCO NHRI.

“We are very excited with the opportunity to enable COFCO to grow more sustainably as it works to feed and fuel the world’s most populous country,” said John Melo, President & CEO of Amyris. “This initial project poses an exciting opportunity for Amyris to apply the world’s leading bioscience platform to lower the cost and improve the performance of the many products we rely on in our day-to-day lives.”

Continued Melo, “COFCO NHRI has been leading the way in China with pioneering technology and is continuing its legacy by pursuing even greater adoption of bioscience. We are proud to have COFCO as our partner and look forward to expanded opportunities with them in the future. This agreement includes the potential for a long term income stream based on the performance of our improvements and is consistent with our business model of enabling the world’s leading companies to grow sustainably, while providing Amyris short-term payment and long-term economics on these improvements.”

The HI-RYSE advanced bioengineering platform dramatically increases the speed and achievable design complexity for genome engineering, accelerating fermentation-based product development.  The end result is the production of target molecules with improved supply security, and lower cost of production at commercial scale. COFCO NHRI joins a growing list of companies worldwide that have chosen to partner with Amyris to leverage this platform in the development of organisms for producing molecules renewably and at lower cost.

About Amyris

Amyris is the integrated renewable products company that is enabling the world’s leading brands to achieve sustainable growth. Amyris applies its innovative bioscience solutions to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules, specialty ingredients and consumer products. The company is delivering its No Compromise® products in focused markets, including specialty and performance chemicals, fragrance ingredients, and cosmetic emollients. More information about the company is available at www.amyris.com.

About COFCO

Founded in 1949, COFCO has developed from a grains and oilseeds trading company into China’s leading provider of agricultural products and diversified food services. COFCO is committed to creating an agricultural and food company with an integrated value chain that connects farms to households and creates a full-service urban system, and to utilizing sustainable natural resources to provide nutritious, premium-quality products.

From trading and processing of grains and oilseeds, COFCO’s value chain has now extended to origination and husbandry, logistics and storage, raw materials processing, biofuels, branded food production and sales, hotels and real estate, and financial services, among others. COFCO is committed to building its core competencies in each stage of the value chain and maximizing value for our stakeholders, customers and employees.

As a widely recognized global company, COFCO has been awarded as one of the “Fortune 500” companies for over 20 consecutive years, the only Chinese agri-food enterprise on the list.

About COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute Co. Ltd

COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute Co., Ltd is the central R&D platform of COFCO. For the health of Chinese people and sustainable development of Chinese society, COFCO NHRI is developing new technology and new products of food and food ingredients, beverage, nutraceuticals, animal feed, biofuels, biomaterials and biochemicals based on new findings of nutritional and environmental requirement and consumer insights.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, and any statements other than statements of historical facts could be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding future events (such as Amyris’s potential future income stream and its ability to expand future opportunities with COFCO NHRI and other companies in China) that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on management's current expectations and actual results and future events may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties, including risks related to manufacturing capacity at Amyris’s Brotas facility, delays or failures in development, production and commercialization of products, liquidity and ability to fund capital expenditures, Amyris’s reliance on third parties to achieve its goals, and other risks detailed in the “Risk Factors” section of Amyris’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on November 9, 2015. Amyris disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Amyris and the Amyris logo are registered trademarks of Amyris, Inc. All other trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.

Peter DeNardo
Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
Amyris, Inc.
+1 (510) 740-7481
[email protected]
[email protected]