First generation companies

Operation and results. Idemitsu Kosan Company, as a member of Rapad sponsored by the Japanese government, has built a 7000 bbl/y demonstration plant in Chiba, Japan, using IF P s process design. Figure 8 presents an overall view of the demonstration unit, which reaction section is very similar to that of Figure 6 the plant was operated fYom Dec. 84 to March 85 with first generation Cu-... 

Cost-effective technologies have been gaining importance in the last few years due to the expiration of patents of the first-generation biopharmaceuticals (Table 16.2). In the past, the concept of time-to-market dominated the industrial arena. Nowadays, companies are willing to focus on process optimization and cost reduction. Important tools for this purpose are the use of advanced genetic manipulation techniques to increase the cell specific productivity, as well as the development of perfusion processes, to increase volumetric productivity, and more efficient purification processes, to improve yield (see Chapters 3, 9, 11 and 12). 

Nevertheless, in comparison with the cobalt technology even the first generation of LPO processes (the expression LPO being coined by BP [266]) proved successful and was promoted by a number of companies (e.g., Celanese, Union Carbide, BASF, Mitsubishi), mostly in parallel. One of the first plants for butanal production belonged to Celanese [192] (later Hoechst-Celanese), closely followed by Union Carbide/Davy Powergas/Johnson Matthey [193] and other companies. 

Naturally-occurring fatty acids, such as oleic acid, could serve as feedstocks for metathesis-centered transformations. For example, workers at Dow Chemical Company explored the use of Grubbs first-generation catalyst (23) to promote ethenolysis of methyl oleate (equation 11.18) to form C10 alkenes, which might serve as feedstocks for some of the processes that have already been mentioned in this section.49... 

The recombinant DNA technology of Cohen and Boyer enabled them to generate the first commercial product in 1978 human insulin expressed in Escherichia coli. These efforts also led to the first biotech company on 15 October 1980 Genen-tech went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Fascination about this modern biopharmaceutical and the huge potential of the new biotechnology caused the stock price to jump from US 35 to 89 in the first 20 minutes by the evening of the same day, the market capitalization was US 66 million ... 

---