The specialty chemical firm Locus Fermentation Solutions has secured $117 million to expand its biosurfactant business . The money comes in the form of an unusual loan that uses Locus’s intellectual property (IP), including more than 1,300 patents, as collateral. Locus uses custom microbial fermentation to produce specialty surfactants. Most of the firm’s products are based on sophorolipids, biosurfactants with hydrophilic sophorose sugar heads and various hydrophobic fatty acid tails. CEO Andy Lefkowitz says the loan will help pay for a capacity expansion underway that will triple overall factory space to 14,000 m 3 at Locus’s headquarters site in Solon, Ohio, and other locations. Locus is organized as a holding company with operating companies focused on different markets. Lefkowitz says the firm’s fastest-growing market is oil drilling and mining, where its surfactants can increase yields and lower carbon intensity. One of the companies, Locus Performance Ingredients, recently signed a pact