Wellington
Auckland-based, globally oriented clean tech company LanzaTech seems to have partnered up with avery useful collaborator for the next stage of its growth.
LanzaTech uses a gas fermentation technology, withpatented bacteria, to convert industrial plant waste gas flues into useful products. As an exampleof turning something nasty into something of benefit to us, and removing the polluting and climatewarming effects of the gases from the atmosphere, it scores heavily on many fronts.
Already it has signed partnering deals with a Korean steelmaker, Chinese coal producers/users andIndia's largest oil marketer.
To complete an Asian quartet, it has also just signed a MOU with Japan's Mitsui Global StrategicStudies Institute, and perhaps more tellingly, with its close relative
Now, LanzaTech's gas fermentation, carried out to scale, requires big plant and engineeringskills.
Mitsui has operations in 56 countries - and knows how to build stuff. It's revenues areequivalent to about half of New Zealand's GDP.
Assuming LanzaTech can retain and improve its proprietary lines of bacteria, it relationship withMitsui (and other partners) should allow it to stick to that particular expertise.
One of the little rules of business is that speed to market and market success is very much basedon who you partner with.
So far, so partnered; though given its rapid growth, LanzaTech will be looking forward to the daywhen some of its overseas plants actually start producing.
The company flies under the radar of most observers in New Zealand. Indeed, most of its publicrelations and media direction points to the global market.
It intends to retain its R&D capability in New Zealand - and many of the highly skilledscientists in their particular field will be attracted to these shores for the lifestyle andopportunities LanzaTech provides.
Its business model, that of keeping and developing the 'brains' side of the operation in NewZealand, while working alongside others who provide their own particular brains and muscle to buildthings is probably the only way to really develop the technology.
No New Zealand company could afford to design and build the engineering plant that converts suchnon-food renewable resources into ethanol and key chemical building blocks used to make polymers,plastics and hydrocarbon fuels.
The company's been on a huge growth curve, and has a number of high profile investors, includingKhosla Ventures out of California and Stephen Tindall's K1W1 (among others).
LanzaTech won an award at the recent