Novozymes

Novozymes A/S produces and sells industrial enzymes, microorganisms, and probiotics in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. The company offers baking, beverages, dairy, starch, and protein solutions for the food and beverage industry; laundry, dishwashing, and professional cleaning solutions for the household care industry; agriculture solutions, including crop production, and animal health and nutrition solutions; bioyield and biocontrol solutions for crops; and grain and technical processing solutions, as well as bio energy solutions for liquefaction, saccharifaction, fermentation, fiber conversion, and biomass conversion. It also provides textile solutions, such as biopreparation, biopolishing, bleach clean-up, denim abrasion and finishing, and desizing solutions. In addition, the company offers solutions for pulp & paper, including fiber modification, bleach boosting, deposit control, starch modification, and deinking; leather solutions comprising acid bating, area expansion, bating, degreasing, soaking, and unhairing and liming; and water and waste management solutions, which consist of bioaugmentation, biogas, and sludge management. Further, it provides pharmaceutical solutions, including lipases, immobilized lipases, and proteases for biocatalysis, as well as rTrypsin for cell culture; and human health and protein solutions. The company was founded in 1925 and is headquartered in Bagsvaerd, Denmark.

In 1925 the brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen founded Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium and Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium with the aim to produce insulin. In 1941 the company's predecessor launched its first enzyme, trypsin, extracted from the pancreas of animals and used to soften leather, and was the first to produce enzymes by fermentation using bacteria in the 1950s. In the late 1980s Novozymes presented the world's first fat-splitting enzyme for detergents manufactured with genetically engineered microorganisms, called Lipolase.The current Novozymes was founded in 2000 as a spinout from pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.In the 2000s Novozymes expanded through the acquisition of several companies focusing on business outside the core enzyme business. Amongst them were the Brazilian bio agricultural company Turfal and German pharmaceutical, chemical and life science company EMD/Merck Crop BioScience Inc. These acquisitions made Novozymes a leader in sustainable solutions for the agricultural biological industry.In January 2016 the company spun out its biopharmaceutical operations into Albumedix.In June 2020 the business announced it would acquire Ireland-based PrecisionBiotics for $90 million. In December of the same year Novozymes announced it would acquire Microbiome Labs in a $125 million deal.

Our purpose is deeply rooted in our heritage. It also looks ahead to what we can achieve together with customers, consumers, governments, academia and others around us in terms of finding the sustainable answers that our world needs, as our CEO explains.

A real and positive impact on the world.