Research & Innovation

Ardra Inc

Challenge/Opportunity:

Ardra is a renewable chemicals company operating in Ontario, and has a portfolio of natural ingredients for the personal care and cosmetics industry. The company currently operates out of Toronto, and has two products in development – 1,3-butanediol and leaf-aldehyde. Ardra’s synthetic biology platform allows it to produce a portfolio of natural ingredients at lower production cost and steady supply.

The success of the project will help strengthen the Canadian bio-economy by de-risking a clean technology developed in Canada that can be adopted by the agriculture and forestry sectors.

Solution/Collaboration:

Ardra is collaborating with Lambton College to optimize the fermentation process for production of bio-based 1,3-butanediol. Ardra’s process uses patent-pending biochemical pathways for production of 1,3-butanediol from renewable raw materials such as glucose.

The production of 1,3-butanediol from non-petroleum raw materials is in high demand in cosmetics industries as a natural moisturizing ingredient. Successful completion of this project will improve Ardra’s current process for production of the ingredient, and will lead to the demonstration of the process at pilot-scale.

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