Building BioMADE: $650M+ in US Chemical Pilot Plants | Dr. Doug Friedman
Recorded November 10, 2026
Host: Justin Smith, SIOR (Lee & Associates Irvine)
Guest: Dr. Doug Friedman (Chief Executive Officer, BioMADE)
BioMADE Official Site: https://www.biomade.org/
BioMADE Pilot Plant Network: https://www.biomadepilotplants.com/

[00:00] Justin Smith: Okay, welcome back everybody to another episode of the Industrial Insights Podcast. Today I have Dr. Doug Friedman with me, who's CEO of BioMADE. And when most people hear about real estate and biotech, you think of like pharmaceutical labs and medicine, perhaps. And Doug is focused on the other half of biology, perhaps, that a lot of people don't know that is super early in the supply chain. And so, Doug, correct me if I'm wrong, you're trained as a chemist, UC Berkeley. went to Northwestern and then worked in Washington, DC, working on a national roadmap for industrial biology. And then formed BioMADE in 2020 with the Department of Defense's backing. And then now BioMADE is interesting. It's not an association and it's not like a VC. You have like this cool middle ground. So I'm interested to learn more about that. That's made up of 300 member organizations. So Doug, thank you for joining me today.

[00:59] Dr. Doug Friedman: Thanks so much, Justin. Happy to be here and yes, you got the background right.

[01:04] Justin Smith: Alright, cool. And then in plain English, I love this. when it comes to what you do, help people understand. It took me three tries to really be able to understand it.

[01:13] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is secure the most early part of the domestic manufacturing supply chain in the US. so just a small problem that we're trying to solve. But really it comes down

[01:30] Justin Smith: That's humor,

[01:30] Dr. Doug Friedman: to the fact

[01:30] Justin Smith: Doug.

[01:31] Dr. Doug Friedman: that

[01:31] Justin Smith: Yes, small yeah.

[01:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: humor is allowed on this podcast, right? I think you

[01:35] Justin Smith: It

[01:35] Dr. Doug Friedman: told me

[01:35] Justin Smith: is.

[01:35] Dr. Doug Friedman: that before

[01:35] Justin Smith: It's encouraged.

[01:36] Dr. Doug Friedman: we got started.

[01:37] Justin Smith: Yes.

[01:37] Dr. Doug Friedman: which is great. So, you know. The reality is I am trained as a chemist and I promise I will not turn your podcast into a chemistry seminar. but I will start with the fact that everything we manufacture is manufactured from chemicals. And when you say it out loud, it sounds really obvious, but It's kind of important to say out loud because it means that to really understand the supply chains for all of the products we manufacture in the US and around the world, you gotta get back to what are the earliest stage chemicals. That make the materials that make, you know, most of what is in your office and around you and in your buildings today and everything you interact with your life. And so what BioMADE works to do is we focus on making those chemicals using biology and biomanufacturing instead of through traditional chemical and chemical engineering type processes, which bring a bunch of opportunities and challenges. And as you pointed out, we work with a consortium of members. we're not really an association, we're not really a government agency, we're not really a lot of things. but what we are is a group that works collectively with more than 300 entities in 40 states around the US to try to get this problem solved of early manufacturing of chemicals. in the US using biology.

[03:11] Justin Smith: Yeah, love it. That's awesome. It's the analogy I use with folks is when you look in your room, so everything in your background and in mine, generally with the exception perhaps of this plant, like went through a warehouse to get to you today. So it's another example of like your chemical analogy, like when you really like stop to think about like, Okay, where did all this start from? How far back do you need to go? You're going back further than I am, for sure. I love that. That's awesome.

[03:41] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, and you know, I'd put dollars on the fact that plant also went through a warehouse.

[03:46] Justin Smith: Yeah. Yes. Okay. I hey I'm a betting man, but perhaps not today, yes. and then like set the stage for where we're at. Like clearly this is there's work to do. So the research I had seen getting prepared for this was comparing Europe and China and then Asia like more generally, between like a research on one hand and like capacity on the other. Like, can you help set the stage?

[04:13] Dr. Doug Friedman: Sure. So you know the best way to start setting the stage is to talk just very briefly about the petroleum industry. Because the reality is the vast majority of our chemicals today that feed into all of the products that we're talking about come from the petroleum industry. And it when you sort of break down the petroleum industry, the vast majority of petroleum goes into fuel and fuel products. We know that. We are not gonna spend a lot of time talking about that. But it's also a scale that is really hard for people to understand. So one of my favorite statistics about the chemicals industry, which is principally from petroleum, is the top 50 companies, five zero companies globally represent four trillion dollars of revenue a year. so it's fairly large. And it's because when you take this underlying question of, hey, like what is everything made from? It's made from these chemicals. So you asked about the challenges. What are some of the principal challenges? Well, one of the biggest challenges we face in the US is that we stopped being a major chemical producer about 25 years ago. We do a great job. with petroleum, we have we are actually a net petroleum exporter now. We have refineries that are developing fuel products, but those aren't making the biggest global contributions to the chemicals industry anymore. The largest single contribution they were. We were the in 1980, we were the best. Right? We were the principal leader in this space. But we divested while other companies invested, or excuse me, other countries invested. And the biggest investor was you know, largely the Chinese government making investments that have grown over the last 25 years to make China by far the largest put chemical exporter. In the world. So they now represent roughly a third of global chemical exports. And you know, the industry is so big, every country around the world has a role to play if they want to. But you start to ask a question of: okay, well, what do those supply chains then look like? And how do we think about in the US? Our manufacturing base of end products that consumers want and their own supply chains and what they want. And if they are principally buying from companies that do their manufacturing in countries that are across the largest ocean in the world, then We're probably not taking advantage of all of the opportunities in front of us for the value chain for domestic chemical manufacturing. And so that's the crux of the challenge. And so then we ask, okay, well, what can we do about it?

[07:18] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[07:18] Dr. Doug Friedman: What are our options?

[07:20] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[07:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: Well, a question I get commonly at BioMADE is: hey, why are we focused on this biotech and biomanufacturing stuff? Why doesn't the chemical industry just start manufacturing more chemicals. and it's actually a really good question, right? Let's start there. Well the main reason is that they divested 25 years ago because it is a really hard industry to be profitable in. And companies need to be profitable to be successful. Now we're facing two problems. One The fact that we divested a quarter of a century ago means that any infrastructure that we have is at best a quarter of a century old.

[08:09] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[08:10] Dr. Doug Friedman: Most of it is 125 years old at this point, right? Because the lifespans of these large-scale manufacturing facilities are very long.

[08:20] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[08:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: The second problem is, well, they divested for a reason. They divested because the economics are really hard in the US. And that hasn't principally changed in the chemicals industry. So there's

[08:32] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[08:32] Dr. Doug Friedman: not a good incentive broadly for them to come back. So, BioMADE's bet. Our bet is that we can solve both of these problems using biomanufacturing, which is a completely different set of infrastructure than the chemical industry needs at the front end, and a completely different economic case, which Before roughly now hurt the biomanufacturing industry. But now we're kind of right on the cusp of getting over the edge and saying, hey, with targeted bets, we can do some really interesting things by onshoring chemical production. And if we take those steps in a meaningful way, when you and I are doing this podcast 100 years from now, we'll be talking about how the US is leading in chemical manufacturing and not the other way around.

[09:32] Justin Smith: Yes. because things str this is a structural change i is one hand I would imagine. I would guess there's technological change that's taken place since that like it can make it more available. And I'm sure there's like a resilience and like a wanting things sourced domestically perhaps just raises like people's willingness to pay to some extent, I'm sure. And perhaps so there's more capital available. Or there's perhaps capital that has not gone into AI that can go elsewhere.

[10:04] Dr. Doug Friedman: if you i if

[10:05] Justin Smith: Some

[10:05] Dr. Doug Friedman: you find that capital, please let me know.

[10:07] Justin Smith: no doubt. Okay. Yeah. and then getting before we delve into more of like the how people do it now or like what BioMADE has set up, knowing a little bit of how you got here without the full when you were five and what soccer team that you started playing on. your journey's pretty interesting. I love it. Total progression. Like looking at like the different stages. And so clearly a couple of things happened where you had like a revelation or where you had a good connection that led you to like make a couple of the jumps. a couple of those, if you wouldn't mind going into that just helped to get you to where you are today. I would imagine working in Washington. My dad worked in Washington back in the day for a period of time as a very like a pivotal point for him in his career and I imagine that was one for you as well.

[10:54] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, it certainly was. And I can give you a few kind of big blocks that helped get us to why I'm intensely focused on this particular problem today.

[11:03] Justin Smith: Yes.

[11:04] Dr. Doug Friedman: so you know, we started with the fact that at the end of so I'm a scientist by training. I will never not be a scientist. I kind of I found that chemistry was easy for me. many other things, most other things maybe in my life are hard for me, but

[11:19] Justin Smith: Sure.

[11:19] Dr. Doug Friedman: I managed to find a thing, right?

[11:21] Justin Smith: Yep.

[11:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: And you know So I I'm very interested in innovation around the chemical sciences and around you know how chemicals impact the world around us and how we are impacted by chemicals. You know, if you any other chemist who might be listening to this would say, Hey Doug, that doesn't actually make any sense. that's true. I get you. But the fact that this inner relation is it really matters. And so, you know, what that ultimately led though for me was to understand that in order for all of this underlying science and innovation to make an impact, we have to understand what are one the levers in society that are available to make a positive impact. And two, how can we do that in a meaningful and expedient way?

[12:13] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[12:14] Dr. Doug Friedman: I have always been relatively impatient. Maybe that's why I started founding things, and we'll get there in a second.

[12:20] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[12:20] Dr. Doug Friedman: But being expedient about it is really important because that's how you make a real difference. And so after graduate school, I had an amazing opportunity to work at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, and do this technology road mapping for many agencies across the federal government. So everything from the National Institutes of Health to the National Science Foundation to the Department of Transportation to the Department of Defense, to the Department of Homeland Security, right? Sort of the interesting part about being a chemist there is it's true. Everything is made of chemicals, which means it impacts

[12:56] Justin Smith: Like, guys,

[12:57] Dr. Doug Friedman: everything.

[12:57] Justin Smith: you don't understand.

[12:59] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah,

[12:59] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[12:59] Dr. Doug Friedman: like, right? And what that exposed me to though was how a lot of others really are viewing the demand signal and the need for innovation, both economic and technological in the chemicals industry.

[13:15] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[13:16] Dr. Doug Friedman: And that oh ultimately drove me to start my first nonprofit consortium called the Engineering Biology Research Consortium or EBRC was focused really on early innovation. So, like the academic side of metabolic engineering and science and technology to help manufacture chemicals using biology. Part of that came from all of this road mapping work I was doing where I said, you know. I have this amazing chemical background, but by far the best chemist is nature. Right?

[13:50] Justin Smith: Yep.

[13:50] Dr. Doug Friedman: We are

[13:51] Justin Smith: The

[13:51] Dr. Doug Friedman: living

[13:51] Justin Smith: ultimate.

[13:51] Dr. Doug Friedman: proof of that.

[13:52] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[13:53] Dr. Doug Friedman: And so let's use that, harness that technology. And I had amazing opportunities with some amazing mentors to help build that consortium. And so EBRC still exists, it's thriving. I had an opportunity after I started BioMADE to hand it off to other leaders who are doing amazing things with it.

[14:11] Justin Smith: Nice.

[14:13] Dr. Doug Friedman: But then kind of getting to BioMADE, the reason BioMADE exists is because if we stop focusing at the early stage and don't get into manufacturing, scale-up, and deployment of products, then we're not having the impact. And we weren't doing that in as coordinated as a way as we thought we could. and that really led to BioMADE's creation where hey EBRC focuses on the early tech. We try to pick it up and help transition those products and those technologies to make a more direct and meaningful societal impact. and along the way I've had a number of opportunities working with the Defense Department, working with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, working with a bunch of others at the intersection of government and the private sector to be able to really drive that forward.

[15:10] Justin Smith: Yes, and you have not been hired by Anthropic yet to go work in their lab.

[15:15] Dr. Doug Friedman: I have not been hired by Anthropic yet to go no. and you know AI is gonna AI is a super important technology.

[15:24] Justin Smith: Yes.

[15:24] Dr. Doug Friedman: it's gonna be a world-changing technology. computers will never on their own be enough for people. We will always be manufacturing stuff. We will always need chemicals to do it. So I'm feeling pretty good about the space ahead of us to say, Hey, like that might help us that's gonna help us move faster. AI's doing an amaz some amazing things. But if

[15:52] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[15:52] Dr. Doug Friedman: you don't have the underlying chemicals to be able to manufacture the products that people want and the products that we need to survive, we're gonna have a hard time.

[16:01] Justin Smith: Yeah, totally. I just it's funny, when I first conceptually like made sense of like of them getting into the biology space, like it took me a minute to like connect all the dots. taking making a bigger impact, and then finding capital and talent and then facilities. Those are the three of like where I would think we would take this, that like you needed

[16:25] Dr. Doug Friedman: Uh-huh.

[16:25] Justin Smith: all of those to get from the idea. and like the first version of it, a larger version of it that scales a bit. So if you wouldn't mind, like it's super unique to have like government funding for something like this and then to figure out like who can then help you and what skills do you need, like what does your organization need to grow and how does that help the people who are members?

[16:52] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, that's a it's a great question. So I'll kind of tackle those one by one. you know, we're really fortunate. BioMADE started through a program that's really focused on national manufacturing. So there's a program that is now I'm gonna get the number a little wrong, 17, 18 years old. called Manufacturing USA, where The federal government, a department or agency, identifies a manufacturing technology area that is important of national importance, right? And that is a political decision that some someone is making somewhere. And there are now 18 of these institutes around the country focused on different manufacturing technology areas. So there are some. The very first one is based in Ohio, focused on additive manufacturing and 3D printing.

[17:41] Justin Smith: Totally.

[17:42] Dr. Doug Friedman: Right? They've

[17:42] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[17:42] Dr. Doug Friedman: been working, so it totally makes sense. So we were really fortunate that this program existed and we were able to get some initial tranche of funding of almost ninety million dollars over five years back in 2020 to be able to catalyze the start of BioMADE. and that was used for a lot of things. It was used to establish the organization, but it was also used to make investments. in our member community to be able to develop some of these technologies as well as invest in the workforce so that we're able to help with manufacturing technician job creation and worker transition and workforce development in that kind of way. And so we were able to start in that kind of in that kind of mode. And then we really grew from there. you know, I'm incredibly fortunate to have an amazing team of talented people that are working at the interface of government and the private sector. And you know, you mentioned your dad worked in Washington. the government is very different from the private sector.

[18:48] Justin Smith: Yes.

[18:48] Dr. Doug Friedman: And In our industry, in industrial biomanufacturing, for the most part, people don't have a lot of experience working with the government. However, when the government decides to make investments, they can be substantial. And

[19:02] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[19:02] Dr. Doug Friedman: so knowing how to work with them is really important.

[19:05] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[19:05] Dr. Doug Friedman: And in a lot of ways, we're the kind of translator and implementer in between those two worlds.

[19:12] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[19:12] Dr. Doug Friedman: Because in a lot of ways, the government doesn't really know how to work with the private sector either.

[19:18] Justin Smith: That's not their specialty. Yeah.

[19:20] Dr. Doug Friedman: It is not. So that intersection is really interesting for us and that's allowed us to develop many of our program areas and our infrastructure areas.

[19:29] Justin Smith: Yeah. And it was cool to learn that this is not like just working with companies and providing like a skills and training and insights and like a consulting. you have maybe a building you own, one you lease and one that's on like a university land, I think is what I could gather. And That's fascinating 'cause I know at University of California Irvine here they have university buildings that are built by a local developer and then they rent out wet lab space and like that's a way for startups and people in research at the university to have infrastructure where they can work and grow and then they have a ecosystem where they have VCs and like they try and like have a way for those people to grow. And so your you have a version of that or your own version that you've created. So like a that's a unique setup. How like how did you come up with that? 'Cause when I saw like not tanks for rent But like some form of infrastructure where people can come in and be a part of it and use what they need to run experiments or to like try out new business ideas. Like that is you then getting directly involved in like having the place and the space and the equipment.

[20:46] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, so well I'll start with I did not set out to have three sort of unique real estate deals going

[20:55] Justin Smith: yes.

[20:55] Dr. Doug Friedman: for this pilot plant network, but I will get I will explain how we got there because it it's interesting to me. I think it'll be interesting to you and hopefully to your listeners as well. but the problem we were trying to solve, right, is We don't have enough pilot and demonstration scale manufacturing capacity for industrial biotech in the United States. And so we were able to get both Congress and state and local governments to make investments to be able to build some of this infrastructure. And We were able to raise quite a lot of money, right? We've raised over $650 million all told for this infrastructure effort. And that's what got us to announcing the three facilities that we're currently building in California, Minnesota, and Iowa. Because we are a nonprofit and working with government investment in establishing these facilities, it sometimes means we need to be and think creatively about the types of deals that we put in place

[21:59] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[21:59] Dr. Doug Friedman: because we have sometimes unique constraints.

[22:02] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[22:03] Dr. Doug Friedman: And so I'll just kind of walk through the opportunities that we had. So in Minnesota, which was the first deal that we announced. We had we were able to secure an investment from the Minnesota state government of fifty million dollars to be matched with federal funds to build

[22:20] Justin Smith: Nice.

[22:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: out a facility, which is amazing. So, you know, our because these facilities exist for so long, it is in our interest to buy. And

[22:32] Justin Smith: Yep.

[22:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: under that

[22:33] Justin Smith: Totally.

[22:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: deal structure.

[22:34] Justin Smith: Yep.

[22:35] Dr. Doug Friedman: We were able to acquire a basically a warehouse. and for us, a warehouse is amazing because it and my engineers love it because they're like, there are No walls is perfect. That means I can do everything I need to do without having a lot of demo. so we were able to purchase, right? So that deal allowed us to purchase this, purchase a building that we're now turning into what will be our largest scale demonstration facility. in California, by contrast, the way we were able to raise the capital, we had some restrictions on government dollars that precluded us from making a purchase. And so we had identified an opportunity actually from a company that had partially built a pilot facility.

[23:20] Justin Smith: Oh,

[23:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: And

[23:21] Justin Smith: nice.

[23:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: we were able to acquire this partially built facility and work with their landlords to come up with a deal that made sense and that was economically feasible in Hayward, California. And that's that's what's happening there. And the reason we've announced that Hayward will open first is because we got a head start. We bought a partially constructed facility essentially, right? So we're

[23:44] Justin Smith: Yes.

[23:44] Dr. Doug Friedman: not starting from scratch.

[23:45] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[23:47] Dr. Doug Friedman: And then in Iowa, a totally different set of opportunities and constraints. We had an investment from Governor Reynolds, the governor of Iowa of ten million dollars. that required working in partnership with Iowa State University and other entities in Iowa, which is amazing. That's exactly what we exist to do. Iowa

[24:08] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[24:09] Dr. Doug Friedman: State University had a facility that they had already been working on from some prior investment at a smaller scale from the National Science Foundation. And we had an opportunity to essentially join them and be quite literally next door in the same building for a larger scale-up facility and be on and sort of ancillary part of their campus and work a deal that's been an amazing partnership with Iowa State to get it done. And I think I'll just briefly say, you know, this goes Back to something I shared before about working with urgency on these problems.

[24:49] Justin Smith: Yes.

[24:50] Dr. Doug Friedman: You know, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. we can be creative and come up with mutually beneficial arrangements that cut across the spectrum,

[25:02] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[25:02] Dr. Doug Friedman: you know, if we're really focused on what is the end result and what are we trying to solve.

[25:07] Justin Smith: Yeah. I love it. Then you can say, we can go whatever direction makes it happen. Yeah, that's awesome. What how fun is that? Yeah, like connecting the federal and the state and then universities and private and then the serendipity of finding a plant that's half built out.

[25:26] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. And learning a lot.

[25:28] Justin Smith: Yeah. Oh, I could only imagine. Yeah. Now you're in charge of making sure all of those work out like are built correctly in the city and everything that goes into construction. If you look inside the four walls, what do you see today?

[25:43] Dr. Doug Friedman: so you know we've we have three very different looking facilities right now. And so in Minnesota we see a lot of holes in the ground and holes in the roof and holes all over the place as we're putting together the sort of ancillary infrastructure that's necessary before we put the equipment In California, we have a lot of equipment in place. we actually just held an open house for our members to start to see what the facility's

[26:09] Justin Smith: Nice.

[26:10] Dr. Doug Friedman: gonna be looking like.

[26:11] Justin Smith: it's happening.

[26:11] Dr. Doug Friedman: About month and a half ago. That was super exciting. We also had our Department of Defense colleagues in town so that they were able to interact with the community, which was great. and then Iowa is still in the planning stages and so we're planning and and developing with the university from there.

[26:28] Justin Smith: Okay. So still dirt. Still going through like yeah.

[26:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: well dirt ish. because we have because they have a an amazing building that we're able to tack on to. They're actually, you know There's a lot of utilities that are required for facilities like this. And so, you know, again, part of the advantage of partnering with like a university and that is doing some of this work already is, you know, some of the utilities are already in place, right? That makes up speed, that makes up time, that makes up cost, all of those things super important.

[27:04] Justin Smith: yeah, that's once you get into that sphere, that's probably the most relatable for me of like all companies having to deal with what's it take to get set up with the and like how much power are you gonna need, how's it gonna be plumbed in there, where do you get all the equipment, who's gonna pay for it all, how long's it take, and who are the people that permit it, or the specialists there. that's the fun stuff. Those are the construction related constraints.

[27:30] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. A lot of the like there's a lot of long lead equipment that has long lead very long leads these days.

[27:37] Justin Smith: Yeah. for you if you expand on that, like I would imagine the equipment I think of is like switchgear or transformers where I would imagine you got equipment inside the four walls that like perhaps have their own.

[27:50] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. Well we yeah, so we have we need both, right? so we have power constraints, we have water constraints, we have waste constraints, right? there's a lot that goes into a biomanufacturing facility. but then you know a good example right now is the amount of the amount of steel inside the four walls for both custom built equipment and off the shelf equipment and then stitching it all together. The price of steel just in the last I think, two years has gone up forty-five percent. Right. That is a huge challenge. Right. Every day that goes by where you don't have your orders in and your leads. And again, we have amazing partners that we work with, but the entire industry is dealing with a really challenging set of constraints right now that are kind of hidden from all sides. And because some of these construction timelines, right, months and years, we don't know what a year from now is gonna look like in every way possible and you know certainly wouldn't think we would be here where we are today a year ago. And so, you know, making sure that we're do actively managing these projects is really important.

[29:05] Justin Smith: Yeah, do you buy extra? Do you sit on it? Do you like buy insurance equipment or steel or yeah. knowing you don't want to do it again. And when you do it again it could be worse, it could be better. That's hard to know.

[29:19] Dr. Doug Friedman: It's hard to know.

[29:20] Justin Smith: so when you take the vision of what these will look like when they're all built out and they're fully humming along, filled with all the members and new members and everybody is doing their thing, like what's that vision look like?

[29:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. So, you know, I should probably describe what these facilities even look like in the first place, right? Like, you know, what does this actually look like and then have a simple user? so at the kind of most basic level, imagine a craft brewery. Many people, most people I like have been to a craft brewery,

[29:53] Justin Smith: Yes.

[29:53] Dr. Doug Friedman: right? You see large fermentation tanks and equipment around those fermentation tanks. It looks basically like that. and some of the technology is not so far off, right? Brewing beer is really the same technology that we're talking about here. It's taking microorganisms, in the case of beer, yeast, putting it in a tank. In that tank, the yeast eat sugar, produce alcohol, you then process it a little bit, you then carbonate it, now you have beer. Right? For us. Same set of steps, but instead of those yeast making alcohol, those microorganisms make some product that we have engineered. So maybe it's butadiene for synthetic rubber, butadiene rubber. Okay, well, that yeast then spits out this chemical, which then we need to take to downstream processing. So we have a bunch of purification steps, which you know, what that looks like are things like centrifuges, things like filtration systems, things like spray drying equipment that all help us get from a big mix of dead cells and water and the product we want and get that product ultimately out and out into the world. But what's unique about our facilities is that we're not making a single product. We have the ability to work with our member companies, have them come in with their technology and use that equipment. And so it's really us providing a service to the industry where

[31:39] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[31:39] Dr. Doug Friedman: they come in and work through these problems, help figure out how to develop it. And that's part of what makes these facilities more complicated than

[31:48] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[31:49] Dr. Doug Friedman: a typical manufacturing facility. And I want to be careful, right? Anyone who's built a big facility knows they're all complicated. I'm not trying to underplay. But

[31:59] Justin Smith: Yes.

[32:00] Dr. Doug Friedman: because these are a hybrid of manufacturing and R&D,

[32:04] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[32:04] Dr. Doug Friedman: we've got a lot of opportunity to build in research and development activities that really support this member ecosystem. And then our big goal is that they manufacture some product in our facility. Help get customer validation, bring

[32:25] Justin Smith: Yes.

[32:25] Dr. Doug Friedman: it to customers, build

[32:26] Justin Smith: Yep.

[32:27] Dr. Doug Friedman: out the business model, hit it out of the park, and

[32:30] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[32:30] Dr. Doug Friedman: then either go build their own facility or go to a large scale contract manufacturer or right, and then all of a sudden their products on the market and they're making money.

[32:41] Justin Smith: Yeah. I think of it as like a coworking for chemicals. So if we have like

[32:46] Dr. Doug Friedman: Not

[32:46] Justin Smith: yeah.

[32:46] Dr. Doug Friedman: wrong.

[32:47] Justin Smith: Yeah. And I would imagine the balance is like what do you bring to the facility and then what do they bring to it, knowing that like all members will have their own unique process equipment, technology, like need for like security, safety, secrets. Like a trademark, all that kind of stuff.

[33:09] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. You know, our job in all of this is to make sure we're providing a safe and secure environment for them. You know, none of this intellectual property is ours.

[33:25] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[33:26] Dr. Doug Friedman: it's all theirs.

[33:27] Justin Smith: Totally.

[33:27] Dr. Doug Friedman: And I think one of the up advantages that we have is we are a nonprofit public-private partnership. Our success is measured by the industry being successful.

[33:39] Justin Smith: Totally.

[33:39] Dr. Doug Friedman: And so it is in our interest, you know, yeah, we have a lot of companies come to us, and a lot of companies share proprietary information with us on projects and others. And, you know, we have a proper agreement in place, but there's also trust, right, within the industry that, hey, we're not going to be sharing across companies. This is yours. We want you to be successful. You know, we'll be there to provide advice and support, particularly on the security and safety side, which is really important in these types of facilities. But at the end of the day, it's the company's product. Yeah.

[34:13] Justin Smith: yeah, totally. That's that's such a unique model. I love it. There's nothing out there like that or nothing that I've seen and like going through every building in Southern California we see quite a lot and there's nothing even close, I would say.

[34:28] Dr. Doug Friedman: Maybe someday there'll be one of these in Southern California, who knows?

[34:31] Justin Smith: Yeah. It is wild to think that you have all these members before you have the facilities. So this is just like a new another way that you can scale your impact.

[34:42] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. And

[34:43] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[34:43] Dr. Doug Friedman: we focused on the facilities, but we've done a lot of other things. So we've you know, in partnership with government and some other Philanthropic entities, BioMADE has helped support investing almost $250 million in underlying technology development and workforce development. And, you know, it's our job effectively to manage that. But that funding is deployed really to our members and in support of their work. And so, you know, our job is that this interface, but that's been a big part of what we've done over the last five years. And as you just pointed out, this infrastructure gives us a huge Opportunity to be kind of a force multiplier in that impact and say, hey, we're going to be developing it, and we've got these assets that you can come use without having to invest additional capital, without having to go to Europe or India or China or wherever, right? Hey, you can come to Iowa and do this thing. It's a lot more convenient than going to India.

[35:45] Justin Smith: Yeah, I'm so focused on the facilities just being a real estate guy. Like that's what we talk about with everybody and then like the people, the logistics, those are all super important. but we're always focused on like the box, the place, how that like the challenges that are focused on it. But you brought it up a couple of different times between like workforce development and some of the other investments. So, If you wouldn't mind expanding on that, like a little just to understand it a little bit more, 'cause on one hand I would think like there would be a VC element to this somewhere. Like there's got to be if you just think of like startups and then you have like finding like the product market fit in the chemical segment and then like scaling it and like wanting to see them successful. so yeah, if you wouldn't mind like workforce development and what are some of the others? Like

[36:37] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah.

[36:37] Justin Smith: yeah.

[36:38] Dr. Doug Friedman: So we work with VCs, we work with the investment community certainly. You know, the vast majority of our members are venture backed

[36:45] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[36:46] Dr. Doug Friedman: companies

[36:46] Justin Smith: Totally.

[36:46] Dr. Doug Friedman: and so that already comes in. But you know, this is the public private partnership part of it. We have an opportunity to work with the federal government and see investments to support certain federal needs. And so, you know, you mentioned at the top that we're a Department of Defense catalyzed institute. you know, they have certain unique needs that can be facilitated through industrial biomanufacturing. And so we work a lot with them to help connect really those government needs with government dollars, make those investments into companies. And we Facilitate a lot of that for government. And at the same time, you brought up workforce. We have an amazing workforce development team that works with principally community colleges across the country to develop the curriculum, the workforce training, the trade needs, etc. for the growth of this industry, because if you can't, right, we can see some successful growth, but if we're not hiring if there the trained technicians aren't available to be on the manufacturing floor, well then we've got a problem. And so we have a workforce team that works on that aspect as well.

[38:02] Justin Smith: I feel like industrial engineering is one that's like getting a like a resurgence of like people doing that in college and there being like a more need for those graduates. So I'm sure there's a chemical version of this as well and that those are all related to some extent.

[38:18] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. You know, you university and I know this from personal experience, like university chemistry, biology, chemical engineering, bioengineering programs are very research and development focused. And those aren't the types of the those aren't the types of people who end up on the manufacturing floor as technicians.

[38:38] Justin Smith: Yes.

[38:39] Dr. Doug Friedman: And so that's why we've had a very deliberate focus at BioMADE on community colleges and K through 12 education to say, hey, like there are really good manufacturing technician jobs that you can get, you know, coming out of high school, do an apprenticeship at a community college that is tied up with a local company. And, you know, there are a couple of examples of pipeline. Where, you know, if you get into this community college program, you're essentially guaranteed a job at this manufacturer in your community. And what we're trying to do is say, okay, like that works in a couple places. Since we have a national focus, like how do we now replicate that two times, five times, ten times over so

[39:30] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[39:30] Dr. Doug Friedman: that there's opportunities for a much larger number of people all over the country?

[39:36] Justin Smith: Yeah, that's you're gonna need some more people.

[39:39] Dr. Doug Friedman: Gonna need more people. Yeah.

[39:40] Justin Smith: Biz busy man. In the if that is in theme of awareness and raising awareness, I thought a fun one would be to learn more of like underrated raw materials in this biomanufacturing space, things that people wouldn't like imagine that are like unsung heroes or ones that are like on a growth trajectory. that like perhaps most people wouldn't know. any come to mind, I imagine you see this like close up from what's scaling or finding success or what you're getting the most phone calls for or the people that are like most interested in your space.

[40:16] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. So the raw materials one's interesting. So today, the vast majority of the raw materials that go into biomanufacturing are corn dextrose. the good news is we grow a ton of corn in the US.

[40:29] Justin Smith: Yes.

[40:29] Dr. Doug Friedman: and this is a great opportunity. but there are others, right? So sugar beets are a good feedstock. Switchgrass, which sort of in the mid-Atlantic area is a feedstock. But then to your kind of point about novel and interesting feedstocks, some of the ones that I am just personally the most interested in are waste feedstocks.

[40:51] Justin Smith: Yes.

[40:51] Dr. Doug Friedman: So how can we use, we actually had a BioMADE project on this four-ish years ago where the feedstock was dairy whey from from

[41:04] Justin Smith: Whey,

[41:04] Dr. Doug Friedman: farms.

[41:04] Justin Smith: like oh yeah, you got you

[41:06] Dr. Doug Friedman: Like

[41:07] Justin Smith: gotta

[41:07] Dr. Doug Friedman: whey protein,

[41:07] Justin Smith: get your protein

[41:07] Dr. Doug Friedman: yes.

[41:07] Justin Smith: in there.

[41:09] Dr. Doug Friedman: right. So, you know, when you tr when a dairy is operating, they have this highly acidic whey mixture that most dairies actually have to pay to get Taken away and then neutralized. Well, if we can instead make that a feedstock for biomanufacturing for those dairy farmers, now all of a sudden something that was a cost center for them, hey, I gotta pay to get rid of this, now they've gotta be able Now they've got an opportunity to bring in, you know, small amounts of revenue, even if they gave it away for free, right? All of a sudden something that cost them now doesn't cost them anymore. And

[41:52] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[41:52] Dr. Doug Friedman: so those examples become super interesting.

[41:56] Justin Smith: Yeah, that's wild. And then self sustaining too to some extent. Like yeah, if they don't even have to get rid of it at all the better.

[42:04] Dr. Doug Friedman: Exactly.

[42:05] Justin Smith: and then that if that's the raw material side of it, then the same question but for like everyday products, if you just think of like what are the some of the cool things that are being made through some of these raw materials that people might be unaware of.

[42:21] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. So, you know, the product question is always a hard one because we're talking about underlying chemicals which make everything. So I can just

[42:30] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[42:30] Dr. Doug Friedman: say everything. That's not what I'm gonna do to you, but

[42:33] Justin Smith: Yes.

[42:34] Dr. Doug Friedman: but that's part of the challenge. So, you know, where this industry's been particularly successful are in a lot of the chemical products that are in cosmetics.

[42:47] Justin Smith: Okay.

[42:48] Dr. Doug Friedman: So Right, like the flavors, fragrances, cosmetics, personal care industry, there are there's a wide variety of products that go into those. And most or many of those products are traditionally bioderived anyway, right? Just go look on the shelf and see what the marketing material looks like, right? It's natural, it comes from this fish or this whatever. Well, you know, one, there are sustainability challenges in some of those cases. So, you know, if we're currently getting a product from an endangered species and we can manufacture the same thing on our own, well, hey, like that's that has a marketable effect in the cosmetics industry.

[43:34] Justin Smith: Hm.

[43:34] Dr. Doug Friedman: I raised butadiene rubber as an example. that's certainly one of them. Natural rubber is another one that we're talking about. manufacturing opportunities. The natural rubber supply chain currently exists where we import only from Southeast Asia for a variety of reasons. That's one that we can bring onshore. just a few examples.

[43:58] Justin Smith: Yeah. I've been in a couple of cosmetic manufacturing warehouses to see what they have going on and see like they do have the tanks in there and then see them like testing their product, which is kind of interesting too, to figure out like, okay, how do we know it's the right consistency, color, it has like the desired effect.

[44:16] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. But that's a great example to just build on that. That's a great example of like the customers of our members, right?

[44:25] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[44:25] Dr. Doug Friedman: Our members are manufacturing the chemicals, those cosmetics formulators, they are buying all of those individual chemicals, formulating them into then the consumer product. So that's exactly what we're what we focus on.

[44:38] Justin Smith: Yeah, that's the hard part to communicate is like you manufacture for the supplier for the people that are the manufacturer of the everyday product and like that's perhaps less glamorous or harder for people to understand if they're not already familiar.

[44:52] Dr. Doug Friedman: yeah, it's certainly less glamorous and it is on the list of things most people don't think about until it becomes a problem in their life.

[45:02] Justin Smith: Yes. Oh totally. Wait a second. We're short on something. What happened?

[45:08] Dr. Doug Friedman: Right. Exactly.

[45:11] Justin Smith: the we are hitting our time soon, Doug. I'm sensitive to your schedule, but the only thing I didn't ask about was either what cities could do to attract folks like yourself in operations like this. but perhaps what I feel like is a little more fun and interesting I didn't ask was about some of the hires that you hired from Cargill and NatureWorks. And I would think that's probably the most interesting because that's bringing in new skills from people who have worked on big facilities and in like a sophisticated work environments that you can bring to the table that can help you and that can help your members and that can help like accelerate this positive impact. So I'd love maybe that is the last one to ask you about just to learn more about.

[45:51] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, so we're you know, I mentioned it a few times in this conversation. We have an amazing team. And, you know, we hire when we're hiring, we're looking for people who have quite a diverse array of experience that allows us to get the job done quickly and safely. And so folks from Cargill and NatureWorks and some of the largest companies in the industry have been

[46:17] Justin Smith: Cargill

[46:17] Dr. Doug Friedman: incredible.

[46:17] Justin Smith: never moves. I'm always like, Hey, so if you need another plant or a bigger one or whatever and it's like when you see the all the infrastructure in place, you're like, I've never seen one of theirs move. They set 'em up and to your point like that infrastructure is meant to be there and be in service.

[46:33] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, and so you know I so you know, getting those folks on our team has been just incredible, right? To make sure we we're doing these product projects right and bring just incredible expertise, right? And that married with government experience, married with nonprofit experience, married with the technical experience, just give us a really dynamic team to work with. But I'm also gonna sneak in kind of an answer to your question about the local, like how can local right, because the truth is, you know, once we build this facility we're Building in Minnesota, you can't move it. Right. Once it's in there, it is bolted to the ground and bolted together. And it is more cost effective to just start over than it is to try to move it. These

[47:15] Justin Smith: Hundred

[47:15] Dr. Doug Friedman: things

[47:15] Justin Smith: percent.

[47:15] Dr. Doug Friedman: don't move.

[47:16] Justin Smith: Yeah.

[47:17] Dr. Doug Friedman: So, you know, the biggest thing, by far the most important thing that we look for in deciding a site for BioMADE in one of these facilities, is a local coalition. That is going to build into their culture for decades to come, the development of this industry. Because these things don't move and they're very large investments. And it is not our job to go and say, hey, City X, you should care about this for the next 30 years. If they don't already have it, if they're not bringing it forward, we're never gonna make them. And so the thing that the San Francisco Bay Area, the Twin Cities area, and Boone, Iowa have in common is a cohort of people locally. that are really committed to driving this industry forward, leveraging these assets. And that's what gives me confidence that when we make these large investments with taxpayer dollars, that they're gonna withstand the test of time and we're gonna be able to do something really important.

[48:34] Justin Smith: Yeah. That's a good point. And I would totally imagine there's clusters. And so just knowing your geography and knowing like your industry and knowing where all those clusters are and like go where the gravity is.

[48:48] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah. And it can be developed. That's my message to folks. You know, just because you don't have it today doesn't mean you can't develop it. And it doesn't take a decade to develop it. But, you know, giving us that confidence is really important for us to pay more attention to your location.

[49:04] Justin Smith: Yeah, what would be a couple that might be on your radar?

[49:08] Dr. Doug Friedman: so you we don't really talk about that. but the what I can say is that a couple years ago we put out an announcement of a down select of six states that we were interested in. that included Hawaii, California, Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina, and Georgia.

[49:30] Justin Smith: Okay.

[49:31] Dr. Doug Friedman: And what you now can see, and Minnesota had already been selected at the time that the time that had happened, what you can see is that the additional two sites that we put in place are

[49:40] Justin Smith: Yes.

[49:40] Dr. Doug Friedman: in two of those six locations.

[49:43] Justin Smith: Yes.

[49:44] Dr. Doug Friedman: we are not limiting ourselves though to only looking at those locations. That work was done quite a few years ago now, and so we're undertaking an assessment as we go for where else to be.

[49:55] Justin Smith: Yeah, awesome. I love it. Yeah, you gotta keep adjusting. Go where the growth is.

[50:00] Dr. Doug Friedman: Indeed.

[50:02] Justin Smith: Well Doug, that's all I got. I I'm sure you've got more, but I appreciate you taking the time. It's industry I knew was going to be a good one to delve into, but we need more of these and you could imagine in different industries and like now's a great time for entrepreneurship to blossom. So like I appreciate the work you're doing out there and it's awesome to set up the infrastructure and like provide the capital. And like help give people us a leg up on getting these things off the ground and getting to like actual like viable industry.

[50:36] Dr. Doug Friedman: Yeah, we're really excited and Justin, this has been a great conversation and appreciate your time and questions and the dialogue.

[50:43] Justin Smith: Yes. Super. I'll put everything in the show notes and I'll catch up with you later.

[50:48] Dr. Doug Friedman: Sounds great.