39. HutanBio – the team striking oil (from algae)

Founders: Dr John Archer, Dr Noor Azlin Mokhtar, and Suhaiza Jamhor
Year founded: 2019
Website: hutanbio.com

The HutanBio team have algae on their mind, and rightfully so. “As world-leading scientists, we understood that algae – single-cell, fast-growing organisms – had huge potential in our battle against climate change. With limited algal strains held in libraries around the world, we believed that the oceans held the secret to more resilient and powerful strains.”

In the hunt for the perfect algal strain for biofuel production, the team screened over a trillion algae samples to find HBx – “our algal oil-producing power horse,” as they proudly call it. 

The result was the discovery of a genome new to science, and one that outperformed all previous algae biofuel attempts, and could just hold the key to producing environmentally friendly fuel alternatives for shipping, aviation and heavy land transport. 

According to the HutanBio team, HBx is uniquely capable of fuel productivity, and has a 20x greater yield than palm oil – the largest biofuel currently used globally, and one that’s utterly destructive to biodiverse rainforest in palm-growing regions.

Their newly-discovered strain of algae had all the hallmarks of a eureka moment. “Put simply, it was the most robust, efficient, highly metabolic, and powerful strain of algae we had ever seen,” the team enthuses. 

“It thrived in areas of the world with some of the highest levels of solar radiation and in very salty water. It could be grown where nothing else would or could grow. Avoiding competition with food crops, habitation, driving deforestation or using scarce freshwater supplies.”

In short, everything that palm oil gets wrong, HBx algae gets right. But, could it really hold the key for producing an environmentally-friendly, sustainable fuel alternative for the future?

“To our knowledge, we are the only company that has successfully produced oil from algae,” the team tells us. “We produce a C16-C18 carbon chain oil that is comparable to diesel oil with regards to energy density, and we do this without impacting food production, driving deforestation or peatland load. We don’t use any fresh water and our sea water is recycled.”

With £3.5m in seed investment raised so far from investors including from the Clean Growth Fund, there’s a strong sense of backing for the HutanBio project. They’re also a part of the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund’s engineering biology portfolio.

The team’s OKRs are to have several customer sites up and running by 2027, and at least two ‘mega sites’ in operation by 2030. All of this has benefits beyond the environment.

The optimum locations for HBx production are tropical countries with strong sunlight, and large areas of barren, arid land.  This innovation can therefore provide employment prospects and boost activity in regions that are currently economically deprived.  

HutanBio has all the makings of an extraordinary business to watch. Their future success could have potentially huge ramifications for global fuel supply and, in turn, the health of the planet. Here’s to HBx, the little organism that could!