Codexis signs second multi-year agreement with Tate & Lyle

Protein engineering company Codexis has signed a multi-year development agreement with global food ingredients supplier Tate & Lyle to introduce CodeEvolver protein engineering platform technology in the food industry.

It is the second multi-year agreement that these two companies have entered in recent months.

According to the new agreement, Codexis will carry out research and development of new enzymes that will be used in the Tate & Lyle’s new food ingredients.

For this, Tate & Lyle will be paying Codexis in the second quarter of this year, where the latter will be working towards improving enzyme technology that was previously developed independently by Codexis.

The deal will see Codexis receive certain research and development service fees and payments over the next two to three years.

Codexis president and chief executive officer John Nicols said: “We are delighted to expand our partnership with Tate & Lyle with this new development agreement and to show our growing penetration into the global food industry.

“This agreement also highlights our strategy to enhance shareholder returns by developing novel protein technology on our own account and subsequently using that de-risked technology as a base to create enhanced customer partnerships.

“We successfully employed this strategy here with Tate & Lyle and are poised to do so similarly with our diagnostics enzymes and novel biotherapeutics pipeline.”

Both companies anticipate that the new agreement would strengthen their relationship following the completion of a separate supply agreement last December.

Tate & Lyle new product development senior vice-president Michael Harrison said: “We have developed a highly productive technical partnership with Codexis over the past four years.

“We view Codexis as an extension of our internal research and development programs at Tate & Lyle and are excited about the opportunities which this partnership brings to deliver new and innovative food ingredients to the market.”