The company's tryptophan plant will be expanded to a final capacity of 2,000 tons per year, with significant additional volumes coming on stream already by August 2011.

The expanded production line takes advantage of a significant improvement of the company's proprietary technology. In addition to that, the infrastructure of the site has been re-organised, leading to a leaner and more efficient operational set-up.

Dr Walter Pfefferle, Head of the Bioproducts Business Line of Evonik, explained: "Through these changes, we believe the competitiveness of Evonik's European biotechnology manufacturing platform is further elevated. And besides L-tryptophan, this platform also continues to successfully manufacture L-threonine, L-valine, L-isoleucine and L-proline."

The TrypAMINO expansion complements two recent expansion announcements of the Health & Nutrition Business Unit of Evonik, namely the expansion of its MetAMINO® production line scheduled for completion in 2014 and the expansion of its Biolys® production in Blair, USA. The current Biolys capacity will be nearly doubled by August 2012 with first additional quantities already being available in November this year.

These expansions are made in order to sustainably supply the rapidly growing demand of the company's feed grade amino acids customers, while underlining the strategic importance of biotechnology within Evonik.

L-tryptophan, which Evonik is marketing under the brand name TrypAMINO, is an essential amino acid which is still in an emerging stage in animal nutrition. It cannot be synthesised by the body and therefore needs to be ingested by the animal with the feed. An optimal tryptophan to lysine ratio enhances feed intake, weight gain and the nutritional value of the feed, while nitrogen excretion is reduced by balancing the dietary crude protein content to the animal's requirement.

Evonik is the only company in the world that produces and markets all four essential amino acids used in advanced animal nutrition: MetAMINO (DL-methionine), Biolys (L-lysine), ThreAMINO® (L-threonine) and TrypAMINO (L-tryptophan). The company markets innovative products and services in more than 100 countries and thus makes a valuable contribution to the cost-efficiency of its customers and to healthy and environment-friendly animal nutrition.