Expansion brings mining, oil and gas, and biosurfactant formulation expertise together under one roof to speed product development and customer-focused innovation
THE WOODLANDS, Texas, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Locus Fermentation Solutions has expanded its laboratory operations in The Woodlands, Texas, strengthening its ability to develop and validate high-performance biosurfactant-based formulations for mining, oil and gas, and industrial applications.
The self-funded expansion consolidates Locus FS’s mining and ingredients laboratory capabilities with its existing oil and gas (Bio-Energy) technical operations, bringing cross-disciplinary teams, specialized equipment, and formulation expertise together in one facility. The investment is designed to accelerate customer-driven product development, improve collaboration across technical disciplines, and support the company’s continued growth in mining and institutional and industrial markets. These laboratory expansions double total functional lab space, enhancing R&D capacity to accelerate biosurfactant innovation across multiple markets.
To learn more about Locus FS’s biosurfactant technology platform and industrial applications, please visit www.LocusFS.com.
“This expansion reflects the next phase of Locus FS’s growth as a science-first specialty chemistry company,” said John Uhran, CEO of Locus FS. “By bringing our technical teams together in one facility, we are creating a more integrated innovation environment that allows us to move faster, solve more complex formulation challenges, and deliver high-performance biobased solutions to customers across multiple industries.”
The expanded facility includes dedicated space for formulation, analytical equipment, ore sample preparation, mineral processing, hydrometallurgical testing and interfacial and coating science. These capabilities support work across mining applications including flotation, leaching, and other process-focused evaluations where surface chemistry plays a critical role in performance. Additionally, the new lab will support growth in our Ingredients segment through biosurfactant formulation while accelerating learning, innovation and knowledge-sharing across all the specialty markets we serve.
The expansion builds on Locus FS’s proprietary fermentation platform and its deep expertise in glycolipid biosurfactants – biobased molecules engineered to address interfacial challenges that occur across industrial systems. In mining, oil and gas, and other heavy industrial markets, many of the most persistent performance challenges occur at the interface between oil, water, minerals, rock, metals, or deposited solids. Locus FS’s biosurfactant-enhanced formulations are designed to act on those interfaces by improving dispersion, modifying surface behavior, and supporting more efficient material separation and mobilization.
Advancing Mining Innovation Through Cross-Industry Expertise
Locus FS has spent years developing and deploying biosurfactant-based solutions for oil and gas applications, where complex reservoir environments require chemistry that can perform under challenging conditions. Many of the same surface and interfacial phenomena are central to mining, where mineral composition, ore variability, and process conditions can significantly influence chemical performance.
The expanded Woodlands laboratory allows Locus FS to apply lessons learned from oil and gas formulation development to mining applications more directly, helping the company develop more robust chemical packages that can perform across a wider range of ore compositions and customer-specific operating conditions.
“Mining presents a highly variable formulation challenge, because ore composition can change from mine to mine and even over time within the same operation,” said Megan Pearl, Vice President of Global Technology. “By integrating our mining work with the broader technical expertise we have built in oil and gas, we can better leverage what we know about biosurfactant behavior, surface chemistry, and complex formulation design to develop solutions faster and with greater application flexibility.”
Unlike conventional approaches that often require highly bespoke chemistry for each ore body or operating condition, Locus FS is focused on developing more adaptable biosurfactant-enhanced formulations that can address shared mechanism-level challenges across different mining environments. The goal is to help customers move from one-off product development toward more scalable, durable solutions that improve process efficiency and support long-term operational performance.
Strengthening a Platform for Sustainable Specialty Chemistry
The lab expansion reinforces Locus FS’s broader strategy of translating precision fermentation into high-performance specialty chemical solutions across multiple end markets. Through its proprietary biomanufacturing platform, the company produces novel glycolipids and microbial blends that act as formulation amplifiers, enabling customers to improve performance while advancing the transition toward renewable, biobased alternatives from conventional petrochemical inputs.
“This investment is about more than additional lab space,” added Uhran. “It is about building the infrastructure, technical alignment, and application expertise needed to scale biosurfactant innovation across industries where performance, reliability, and sustainability all matter.”
Locus FS expects the expanded laboratory to support faster testing cycles, stronger collaboration between technical teams, and continued commercialization of biosurfactant-based solutions for mining, energy, agriculture, industrial, and consumer product applications.
Media Contact: Matt Prissel
Contact Info: pr@locusfs.com
ABOUT LOCUS FS
Locus Fermentation Solutions (Locus FS) is a USA-based biotechnology company delivering high-performance specialty chemical formulations enhanced with novel glycolipids and microbial blends. Built on deep microbial expertise, the company develops bio-based additives that act as powerful formulation amplifiers – pushing performance beyond the limits of traditional chemistry across industrial, CPG, energy, mining and agricultural applications. With a proprietary biomanufacturing platform and science-first approach, Locus FS helps customers solve complex formulation challenges and accelerate the transition to smarter, more sustainable solutions.
SOURCE Locus FS