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 $10.00 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 Ontario, Canada. Its new pioneer plant is currently under construction in Sarnia, in an industrial park at the Arlanxeo site.
