Origin Materials gets SPAC merger deal

Carbon negative materials company Origin Materials is going public with Artius Acquisition Inc., a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal that values the combined company at approximately $1.8 billion.

Under this deal, Origin will get up to $925 million in gross proceeds, comprised of Artius’ $725 million of cash held in trust, assuming no redemptions, and an oversubscribed $200 million fully committed private investment in public equity, or PIPE, at $10 per share, including investments from Danone, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and AECI.

Other investors included certain funds and accounts managed by Sylebra Capital, Senator Investment Group, Electron Capital Partners, BNP Paribas AM Energy Transition Fund and affiliates of Apollo.

Shares will continue to trade on the NASDAQ stock market as “ORGN” after the merger is approved.

The merger will allow Origin to scale and commence commercial production to meet signed customer offtake and capacity reservations of $1 billion across a diverse range of industries, Rich Riley, co-CEO of Origin, said.

“Our rapidly expanding order book sits at $1 billion today and is comprised of offtake agreements (including customer options) and capacity reservations. Our customers are investing in Origin’s carbon negative materials now to reserve capacity in our first plant that is planned to come online in 2022, to be followed by a commercial-scale facility in 2025.”

Origin Materials already operates a pilot plant at the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park, in Sarnia, Ontario. Its new pioneer plant is currently under construction in Sarnia, in an industrial park at the Arlanxeo site.

Founded in 2008, Origin has developed patented breakthrough platform technology for producing recyclable and sustainable materials through the conversion of non-food sustainable wood residue feedstocks into competitively priced drop-in chemicals. The company aims to decarbonize the materials industry, which represents a $1 trillion market opportunity to revolutionize the production of a wide range of end products.

“Origin’s vision is a world where carbon-negative products and materials are the rule, not the exception,” said John Bissell, co-founder and co-CEO of Origin.

The technology has been validated by an ISO-compliant Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) conducted by Deloitte, which concluded that Origin’s products are expected to be carbon negative when produced at commercial scale. Origin produces sustainable and recyclable carbon-negative materials at a fraction of the cost of other bio-based technologies.

The Boards of Directors of both Origin and Artius have unanimously approved the transaction. The transaction will require the approval of the stockholders of both Origin and Artius, and is subject to other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. All Origin existing shareholders will roll 100 percent of their equity holdings into the new public company.