New members included representatives from a range of industries, including United Airlines (aviation), The Scouler Company (agriculture), Duke Energy (energy), Church & Dwight (consumer packaged goods), SABIC (chemicals and fertilizer) and Mars Symbioscience (food & nutrition).
During the course of the year, ABO added more than 150 new members for 2012 and 2013, including 99 that signed up during the Algae Biomass Summit this past September in Denver, Colorado.
"These inspiring new membership numbers reflect the growing recognition that algae-based technologies and products have a significant role to play in the sustainable production of a range of commodity products, including fuel, feed and food applications, novel chemicals, human health and nutrition and many others," said Mary Rosenthal, the organization's executive director. "While algae-derived fuels have been much of the early focus of investors and industry, there's no doubt that there is incredible opportunity in many other market segments. Our growing, and increasingly diverse, membership reflects this reality."
ABO's newest platinum level members in 2012 were: United Airlines and DLA Piper. New Gold members in 2012 were: Duke Energy and Mars Symbioscience. New Corporate memberships in 2012 included: Church & Dwight, Keller and Heckman LLP, Fluid Imaging Technologies, Inc., MicroBio Engineering, Inc., SABIC, POS Bio-Sciences, GreenField Ethanol, Inc., Georg Fischer LLC., Texas AgriLife Research, and Harvel Plastics. Corporate memberships joining around the Summit in Denver were Solutions 4CO2, The Scoular Company and Evodos. More than 130 others joined ABO in 2012 as individuals from academic, business and lab entities.
Algae industry highlights in 2012 included the first retail availability of algae-based biodiesel in California; the successful commissioning of Bioprocess Algae's plant that produces algae for animal feed and nutritional markets; the commencement of operations at the world's first commercial demonstration algae-to-energy facility; the recognition of algae as agriculture by Arizona and Ohio legislatures; research proving saltwater-grown algae can eliminate the need for fresh water; the deployment of algae wastewater treatment systems; and numerous technological breakthroughs in algal strain development, including the production of anti-cancer drugs from algae.
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