The partnership was first announced Tuesday; details of what it will mean locally were released Friday.

The planned facility will be located close to the CJ Bio America plant in the ag industrial park west of Fort Dodge called Iowa’s Crossroads of Global Innovation. It will produce biodegradable polymers and other sustainable chemicals. Lygos Inc. reported that up to 40,000 metric tons a year of Soltellus biodegradable polymers would initially be produced.

Construction is expected to take 18 to 24 months.

“CJ Bio has recently formed a precision fermentation CDMO (Contract Development & Manufacturing Organization) business to bring more bio-based solutions to market,” Lance Choi, chief executive officer of CJ Bio America, said in a written statement. “Scaling up our existing CDMO partnership with Lygos to manufacture commercial quantities of their products will help us serve our mission to deliver innovative and sustainable products to large markets.”

Eric Steen, founder and chief executive officer of Lygos Inc., said his company is “looking forward to contributing to a community with a rich and growing history in biomanufacturing.”

“We’ve identified clear, higher performance value propositions with our customers, launched those products to the market, and are now pleased to be expanding our partnership with CJ to develop a biorefinery complex in Fort Dodge to commercially manufacture our products at a readily expandable facility,” he said in a written statement.

“We’re pioneering a new business model for efficiently bringing sustainable solutions to market,” said Steen. “The biorefinery complex, combined with our unique Collaborate to Accelerate strategy, allows us to control the entire product development process from idea to R&D, to commercial delivery, helping us expand the scale of our flagship products while offering significant future value potential.”

The announcement was welcomed by local leaders.

“Webster County, the city of Fort Dodge and the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance are committed to fostering growth and prosperity in the region, and this announcement is the first step in what we believe will become a positive economic development opportunity in our county,” said Astra Ferris, chief executive officer of the Growth Alliance.

“Projects like these bring a significant amount of investment to our area, which positively impacts our communities and our quality of life,” she added. “We will continue to steward this, and all other prospects for economic growth, and we look forward to the exciting opportunities to come.”

Webster County Supervisor Mark Campbell added, “We are excited about the continued investment in our ag industrial park.”

The CJ Bio America plant produces amino acids used in feed for poultry and hogs. It also produces a liquid soil amendment.

The plant opened in 2013 and has been expanded twice since then.

Lygos Inc., based in Hayward, California, was founded in 2011.

According to the company’s website, it uses biology, chemistry and application expertise to make sustainable products which are used in agriculture, personal care products and other diverse uses.