Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) You have a question from the line of Laurence Alexander of Jeffries.
Amanda for Laurence Alexander – Jeffries
First question on the specialty enzymes business, could you talk a little bit about what the pipeline for new products looks like over the next three to five years?
Carlos Riva
This is Carlos. There’s a bit of a broad spectrum. I would put it into a couple of categories. One are improvements on our existing commercial projects that we’re working on. The next generation purifying, for instance.
There’s also a variety of enzymes that address different markets that are in some cases what I call adjacencies like with Veritas, which was similar to a product already serving one market but which had a applicability to another one. In this case, it was serving the corn ethanol market, but found an application with some relatively minor modifications to the beverage and sweetener. Then there are products developed over the past that need additionally more work in terms of regulatory approvals and the like, but could be brought to different markets that we currently don’t serve.
Amanda for Laurence Alexander – Jeffries
Question for Jamie. As the new CFO, wanted to get your perspective on the timeline for financing the Florida project?
Jamie Levine
Well I think, Amanda, as we announced already, there has been a submission to the DOE, which is the critical element in terms of thinking about the leverage component within the equity coming from the partners. So at this stage, I think that we expect to hear back from the DOE this year, but I don’t think we can commit to any specific timing around that, but that’s what would I say is kind of the critical under-pinning of the financing for that first commercial product.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Sanjay Shrestha with Lazard Capital Markets. Please proceed.
Sarah for Sanjay Shrestha - Lazard Capital Markets
Hi, this is Sarah in for Sanjay. I know that you’ve just begun the optimization phase, but can you comment at all on where you are in terms of getting to the sub $2.00 cost per gallon or how long it will take to get to that point?
Carlos Riva
Well it’s a early to comment on that. Again, we are testing as I’d mentioned in my comments the energy cane we’ll be looking to test. We’ve done a lot of work with Begast. We’ll be looking to test Sorghum as well, but our timeframe is later on this year to be able to have enough confidence in the cost of the product to be able to move to the next stage of getting ready to design the commercial unit to begin construction early next year.
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