Marathon pursues investment, feedstock agreement with Yield10 Bioscience

Camelina

Yield10 Bioscience Inc. announced May 1 that it has signed a nonbinding letter of intent (LOI) with Marathon Petroleum Corp. regarding a potential investment and offtake agreement for low carbon-intensity camelina oil as biofuel feedstock.

Marathon is a leading, integrated downstream energy company in the U.S.

Marathon produces renewable diesel in Dickinson, North Dakota, and Martinez, California.

The company also has feedstock-pretreatment facilities at former biodiesel plants in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Beatrice, Nebraska.

In addition, Marathon is involved in a joint-venture partnership with Archer Daniels Midland Co. to build a soybean-crush facility in Spiritwood, North Dakota.

“Yield10 continues to execute on our commercialization plan to supply low carbon-intensity camelina-feedstock oil to the growing North American biofuel market through a network of supply-chain alliances,” said Oliver Peoples, president and CEO of Yield10 Bioscience. “We look forward to working closely with Marathon’s team to finalize a definitive investment and offtake agreement as the basis for a strategic alliance in biofuels over the long term.”

In connection with the execution of the LOI, Yield10 Bioscience also sold and issued a senior unsecured convertible promissory note to an affiliate of Marathon in the original principal amount of $1 million, which is convertible into shares of the company’s common stock or other qualified securities, subject to certain conditions and limitations.

The company plans to use the net proceeds from the convertible note for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Additional information regarding the convertible note will be included in an 8-K report to be filed by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yield10 Bioscience is an agricultural bioscience company that is using its differentiated-trait gene-discovery platform, the “Trait Factory,” to develop improved camelina varieties for the production of proprietary seed products, and to discover high-value genetic traits for the agriculture and food industries.