Novozymes, the biomass division of which concentrates on cellulosic biofuels, has two reasons to celebrate this week.

1) President Bush is coming for a visit to its Novozymes North American subsidiary plant in Franklinton on Thursday

2) Yesterday, the company announced that it had prevailed in a patent lawsuit against a rival.

My general view is, good for them and here's why.

Few doubt now that there will be serious competition between food and ethanol driving demand for the US's limited corn supply and its prices higher. The only way out of this has to be to extract more oil from the unutilised part of the corn plant (i.e. everything except the cob) and other biomass by the use of genetically engineered enzymes.

So enter Novozymes and President Bush's interest.

Because in this capability at least, Denmark's Novozymes can claim to be a world contender.