Tuesday, June 17, 2008

GreenFuel grabs Upfill-Brown as new CEO to replace Metcalfe

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

After a year of corporate restructuring and searching for a long-term leader, Cambridge-based algae bioreactor developer GreenFuel Technologies Corp., has named a new CEO.

Simon Upfill-Brown, a former executive at Dow Chemical Co., will take the corner office in July. GreenFuel investor and board member Bob Metcalfe, a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, has held the position of interim CEO since the company announced a restructuring last June. Metcalfe will remain on the company’s board.

Upfill-Brown was previously CEO of Texas-based chemical processing company Haltermann Custom Processing for eight years before the firm was acquired by Dow Chemical for $50 million in 2001. He remained with Dow Haltermann until the unit was spun out earlier this year.

Among Haltermann’s specialty chemical processing services is the creation of biodiesel, for which GreenFuel plans to be an algae oil feedstock supplier, according to the company.

GreenFuel is developing a system that cleans flue stream emissions using algae. As the algae “eats” harmful emissions such as carbon dioxide, it grows and can be harvested as biomass, for use in a number of end products, including biodiesel fuel.

Last July, after an algae development project produced unexpected results and a new round of funding fell through, the then 50-person GreenFuel was forced to cut its staff in half and went through a restructuring, including the installation of Metcalfe as interim CEO. To support the restructuring, the company landed $5.5 million in bridge funding last summer, and closed a $13.9  million round last month. It has also begun growing its head count, which is now north of 30 people.

All told, the company has raised $36 million since its inception in 2001. Additional investors include Access Private Equity and Draper Fisher Jurvetson,

Reports have also surfaced that the company has signed on to a $92 million project to build an algae-based fuel plant in Europe. While Metcalfe would not confirm the dollar amount of the project, he said there is a new project in Europe and that the company recently shipped its first field assessment unit to the location.

“In June or July we are hoping to sign a few more projects of that magnitude and that will keep us going for a few years,” he said, adding that the company expects its next two projects to be in the United States.

With the CEO role filled, GreenFuel is also looking for a new CTO. Co-founder and previous CTO Isaac Berzin left his position last year to return to his home country of Israel to pursue other projects. While he maintained a scientific advisory role with GreenFuel after his departure, he left the company entirely earlier this year, though he remains a shareholder, according to Metcalfe.