Newsroom

As posted in Forbes: GREEN TECH:
Those changes forced some of the early stars in the algae field out of business…the companies that remained had to adapt. Fortunately, algae is an extremely versatile resource…Seattle-based Blue Marble Biomaterials has shifted its focus to producing flavorings and fragrances–once byproducts from its algae-to-fuel process and now lucrative products.
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From Co.Exist:
Anheuser-Busch doesn’t just produce cheap beer for football games and frat parties–it also produces mountains and mountains of biological waste. The beer industry goes through more than 400 million tons of grain every year. These grains are used in the early stages of the brewing process and then discarded.
Most breweries give these spent grains away as livestock feed to avoid landfill fees. But Anheuser-Busch is exploring a new option: using those spent grains to create commercial products like clothes and cosmetics.
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From Grist:
Now you can feel good after knocking back a few brewskis — and not just because you’re tipsy. Beermaker Anheuser-Busch has found a way to turn its waste grain into an array of products, from clothes to cosmetics to biogas.
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From Biorefining Magazine:
While the utilization of algal biomass for the production of biobased specialty chemicals isn’t a new concept for Seattle-based Blue Marble Biomaterials at its integrated biorefinery in Missoula, Mont., Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer James Stephens said the company remains committed to the age-old philosophy of “using the whole animal” as evidenced by its newly-formed private/public research partnership with the University of Montana.
The new partnership with UM, according to Stephens, aims to leverage ongoing research by Carrine Blank, a research assistant professor at UM’s geosciences department, and Nancy Hinman, a geosciences professor, who’ve discovered a unique class … Read More »

From The Missoulian:
Sometimes, to see the future you have to look back – say, 2.5 billion years back.
That’s the plan at Missoula-based Blue Marble Biomaterials, a young company exploring ways to make extremely valuable products out of prosaically natural processes.
“We concentrate on making things worth between $5,000 and $6,000 a kilogram,” Blue Marble co-founder James Stephens said. Things like food colorings, flavors and nutritional oils derived from coffee grounds, beer mash and algae. And a recent discovery about a very old form of algae may revolutionize both Blue Marble and the whole business of bioengineering.
Stephens graduated from the University of … Read More »

From Biorefining Magazine:
If there’s ever a blueprint of the integrated biorefinery of the future, it could well be  the one operated by Blue Marble Biomaterials in Missoula, Mont. Since it opened in July, the Seattle-based firm has demonstrated how sustainable biomass refining and chemical manufacturing can convert virtually any organic feedstock imaginable via flexible conversion platforms into a range of biobased chemicals for the food, fragrance and cosmetic industries, while producing zero waste in the process.
Blue Marble’s biorefinery recycles nearly 100 percent of its water through a reverse osmosis system, which saves more than 26,000 gallons of water monthly. Recycled … Read More »

From UM News:
Two geoscience faculty members at The University of Montana have started a partnership with a private company to sustainably produce commercial products from algal biomass.
Potential products include organic fertilizers, natural pigments, food flavorings, fatty acids for biofuels, cholesterol-reducing compounds for food additives, and natural anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer drugs. Natural inputs and nontoxic production methods will give potential products a competitive advantage over similar products produced from petroleum and other nonrenewable sources.
Carrine Blank, a research assistant professor in UM’s geosciences department, and Nancy Hinman, a geosciences professor, are working on the project with Blue Marble Biomaterials, a company specializing … Read More »

From Planet-Profit Report:
Story in Brief: Biochemist James Stephens believes he has the answer to producing chemicals required in consumer products in a post-petroleum world: drop-in replacements identical in chemical structure to petroleum-derived substances but derived from plant and other organic wastes. Blue Marble, which relocated from Seattle to Missoula in March, is attracting companies looking to use the drop-in chemicals to add “natural” and “environmentally-friendly” to their product claims.
The Problem: Much of the research aimed at transitioning from fossil fuels is directed to the energy sector. As the United States and other countries begin to reduce their demand for petroleum, … Read More »

From NBC Montana:
A Seattle based company that produces fragrances and flavorings out of plant material is up and running in Missoula. Blue Marble Biomaterials is working on alternatives to petroleum based products.
The green company has plans to expand its operations and its workforce in Missoula. The company uses natural agricultural wastes like grass clippings, coffee grounds, or timber products.
Bacteria converts materials like that into fragrances you’d find in cosmetics or flavorings. It might be Juicy Fruit or Tutti Fruiti.
“We bring it in and we ferment it like beer,” said chief scientific officer James Stephens. “The only difference between us and … Read More »

From the Missoulian:

When Blue Marble Biomaterials moved its biochemical manufacturing facility to Missoula recently, it brought along a set of “green jobs.”
Two of those jobs went to Ryan Parks and Adrienne Bull, young western Montana residents who plan to stick around the area to work and take advantage of Blue Marble’s potential to grow.
Parks – who is working on an energy technology degree from the University of Montana College of Technology – has spent the past week putting together a reverse osmosis system that extracts water from the biomaterials manufactured there.
Bull explained she is collaborating with Parks on that … Read More »

As posted in mtbusiness.com:
Jeff Mangan, mtbusiness.com
We had the opportunity to speak with Kelly Ogilvie, CEO of Blue Marble Biomaterials. Kelly, tell us about Blue Marble and what the company does.
Kelly Ogilvie, Blue Marble Biomaterials
Blue Marble is a renewable chemical company. We take plant material and go through a process of feeding it to bacteria. The bacteria in-turn manufactures chemicals that are replacements for petrochemicals. So we are really manufacturing specialty chemicals from plant material, whereas it would traditionally come from petroleum.
Jeff Mangan, mtbusiness.com
I imagine it is a lot harder than it sounds.
Kelly Ogilvie, Blue Marble Biomaterials
A little bit! A little bit!
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Founded in 2005 by CEO Kelly Ogilvie and chief scientific officer James Stephens, it has since shifted focus, changing its byproduct, biochemicals, into its products.

From the Missoulian:
A Seattle-based biotechnology company expects its Missoula facility to be fully operational within the next month.
Blue Marble Biomaterials, located in the Missoula Development Park, takes agricultural waste and produces renewable chemicals for industrial use. These products are created when waste is fed to bacteria and then fermented into useable chemicals.
Blue Marble co-founder and CEO Kelly Ogilvie said the products the company manufactures will be used in food flavorings, fragrances and cosmetics.
The recent consumer demand for more natural and environmentally friendly products is something Blue Marble is hoping to capitalize on.
“The stuff we eat and the stuff we put … Read More »

From Green Car Congress:
Blue Marble Biomaterials, a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Marble Energy Corp., has launched the first zero-waste chemical biorefinery in the US in Missoula, Montana. Blue Marble Energy uses novel bacterial consortia to produce specialty biochemicals from the anaerobic fermentation of a range of biomass feedstocks. (Earlier post.) The facility will produce 72 tons of fine chemicals a year and only purified water and pellet fuel for wood-boilers as its waste.
The company is implementing novel recycling systems to eliminate waste and reduce cost: a photo-bioreactor containing algae purifies wastewater and waste gas from the fermentation system and … Read More »

From Biofuels Digest:
In the annual Christmas televised special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, we meet King Moonracer, the winged-lion ruler of the Island of Misfit Toys, who flies around the world each night in search of unwanted dolls and Charlies-in-the-Box.
Is that not what the best of bio-entrepreneurs do? Bring unwanted, unloved, low-value feedstocks to the Island of Misfit Materials?
There, apply industrial fire and magic, in the form of microbial or thermochemical transformation. Unlocking high value for the investor, diverting one more waste material from the landfill, and taking us a step closer to the world beyond the barrel of oil?
The Digest … Read More »

According to a new SEC filing, Blue Marble Energy attracted another $1.3 million investment — this time in a series A-1 convertible note deal — to create carbon neutral alternatives to petrochemicals.

Kelly Ogilvie, CEO of Blue Marble Biomaterials, agreed with Burciaga on the importance of feedstock flexibility. But, Ogilvie’s notion of a biorefinery five years down the road strayed from Burciaga’s. While TRI’s technology is geared towards both advanced biofuel and biobased product manufacturing, and offers a proven approach to an integrated facility, Ogilvie stressed the enormous opportunity his company sees in the biobased chemical space.

Blue Marble Biomaterials is one of an increasing number of pure-play renewable chemical companies that are making exciting commercialisation moves. The Seattle-based company manufactures renewable specialty chemicals for the food, fragrance, cosmetics, and personal care industries and has just signed a major deal with Sigma-Aldrich Corporation to distribute several of its bio-chemicals.

Blue Marble Biomaterials and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (Nasdaq:SIAL) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), under which Sigma-Aldrich will distribute several of Blue Marble Biomaterials’ sustainable biochemicals. Blue Marble expects to begin shipments to Sigma-Aldrich in Q1 2011.

Blue Marble is honored to receive a $30,000 grant award to plan, design and permit their renewable chemical biorefinery in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.

Having already demonstrated its ability to effectively produce a suite of green chemicals from cellulosic and other nonfood-based biomass at its one-ton-per-day pilot facility in Seattle, Blue Marble Biomaterials intends to build on that success by repurposing a 40,000-square-foot facility into a 100 metric-ton-per-month biobased chemical plant in Corvallis, Mt.

The Seattle-based company was originally founded to produce biofuel from algae and other biomass. The company has undergone a transformation and recently launched its wholly owned subsidiary Blue Marble Biomaterials.

Blue Marble CEO and co-founder, Kelly Ogilvie, will be a panel speaker at Senator Max Baucus’ Montana Economic Development Summit.

Didn’t there used to be a Blue Marble Energy? That group of Seattle-based entrepreneurs and scientists who aimed to harvest wild algae for a fermentation process that would produce renewable fuels, and some specialty chemicals. They launched an algae-based fragrance last year during the holiday season, one of the more interesting bio-based products of the year.

Blue Marble Biomaterials will operate as the renewable chemical arm of Blue Marble Energy. Blue Marble Biomaterials (BMBM) will initially produce renewable chemicals for the food, flavoring, personal care and cosmetics industries.

At Blue Marble Energy, ecosystems of bacteria in 300-gallon tanks convert brewers grain into valuable chemicals.

Seattle-based Blue Marble Energy was founded in 2005 by CEO Kelly Ogilvie and Chief Scientific Officer James Stephens to produce an eco-friendly biofuel from algae and other biomass. But in recent years, driven by the expense of production and the lack of a sustainable market, the company has altered its focus to manufacturing biochemicals and flavorings.

Fragrance company Sweet Anthem has partnered with Blue Marble Energy to create a carbon neutral fragrance line.

One of the world’s first carbon neutral fragrance lines was officially launched this week by Blue Marble Energy, in collaboration with local couture perfumery Sweet Anthem.

The modern world lives in the house that oil built. Everything around us comes from petroleum. Over 96% of all consumer products, from liquid fuels to plastics, paints, clothes and food are derived from petrochemicals or require oil for their production. Aware of this dependence, Seattle based Blue Marble Energy, set out to find a sustainable alternative.

Blue Marble Energy Corp. announced today that the company and the Odessa Public Development Authority (OPDA) were recently awarded $2 million by Washington State’s Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) in a private/public partnership to construct the state’s first specialty biochemical biorefinery in Lincoln County, WA.

Blue Marble Energy Corp and the Odessa Public Development Authority have been awarded $2 million from Washington’s Community Economic Revitalization Board to build the state’s first specialty biochemical biorefinery in Lincoln County, Wash.

Within a year the Barr Regional Bio-Industrial Park could be ingesting 75,000 tons of municipal, commercial and farm waste. The material will be converted into fertilizer, enough electricity to supply 1,000 homes, and substitutes for some of the chemical industry’s petroleum-based raw material. Nothing will be wasted.

Under a new partnership, Seattle-based Blue Marble Energy Corp. will produce its biochemicals using a supply of microalgae from algae producer Bionavitas, Redmond, Wash.

Blue Marble Energy’s proprietary AGATE (Acid, Gas and Ammonia Targeted Extraction) system uses different bacterial consortia (“cassettes”) in an anaerobic fermentation process to produce a variety of biochemicals, including short-chain esters, amides and green anhydrous ammonia. It also generates renewable natural gas as a product.

Two of America’s leading renewable biochemical companies, Blue Marble Energy Corp. and Bionavitas, announced a partnership today in which Blue Marble Energy will produce high-margin biochemicals from microalgae supplied by Bionavitas. Blue Marble CEO Kelly Ogilvie officially announced the partnership at the 3rd Annual Algal Biomass Summit in San Diego.

Standing before two large tanks, Kelly Ogilvie, ’01, is waxing eloquent about aerobic and anaerobic respiration and fractional distillation. If he sounds like a scientist, there’s a good reason: In his early years, Ogilvie aspired to become a quantum physicist.

Waste-to-energy and biochemicals company Blue Marble Energy Corp. raised about $1 million in a Series A round of financing, with an eye to getting another $1 million as it achieves some milestones in coming months, a company executive told Clean Technology Insight.

Kelly Ogilvie from Evergreen Film on Vimeo.

With a new environmental crisis forming, Ogilvie thought, ‘what better way to turn a problem into a solution?’ He devised a technology to convert wild algae into specialty chemicals and natural gas.

Blue Marble Energy (BME) isn’t your average biofuel company. BME does convert algae biomass to renewable energy, but it’s their unique strategy that sets them up for success. While many waste-to-energy companies are struggling to create a sustainable business model, BME realized that it needed to take a different approach if it was going to succeed financially.

Kelly Ogilvie, founder, president and CEO of Seattle-based Blue Marble Energy, says that going after biofuels alone is not enough to turn algae into a commercial success. Unlike other companies in the field, Ogilvie is working to commercialize a process that converts wild algae not only to fuel, but also into “high-margin bio-chemicals.”

Algae are attracting a lot of attention and investment as an alternative energy source. Algae grow quickly, contain a lot of oil and don’t take up valuable farmland. Ann Dornfeld profiles one Seattle, Washington, company that is trying to turn algae into fuel.

The Seattle-based company has come up with a system for generating algal blooms in wastewater facilities and then feeding the algae to other microbes. These other microorganisms in turn metabolically convert the algae into high-value industrial chemicals like propyl butyrate, said CEO Kelly Ogilvie, speaking at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference taking place in Redwood City, Calif.

Algae is attracting a lot of attention and investment as an alternative energy source. It grows quickly, contains a lot of oil, and doesn’t take up valuable farmland. Algae researchers from around the world are meeting in Seattle today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) for the second–annual Algae Biomass Summit. KUOW’s Ann Dornfeld profiles one Seattle company that’s trying to turn algae into fuel.

Unwanted Dumas Bay seaweed could have a cutting-edge future as a biofuel.

Algae have some appealing attributes. They grow in water. They multiply quickly, and certain strains have a high oil content, making them a good candidate for biodiesel. They feed on carbon dioxide, which is associated with global warming. And they can grow in industrial runoff and wastewater.

In Seattle, Blue Marble Energy is putting algal biomass in anaerobic digesters to produce industrial chemicals and methane…saleable byproducts include anhydrous ammonia, and other industrial chemicals currently made with petroleum.

The chorus of criticism of using food, or acreage that is being diverted from food production to energy has intensified as the global food crisis continues.