Warner leaves Harris Group for senior VP position at Solazyme

Solazyme Inc. announced on Jan. 13 the November hiring of Mark Warner as senior vice president of engineering. Warner joins Solazyme from Harris Group where he was senior vice president of process industries. In his new role with Solazyme, Warner is responsible for the design and construction of Solazyme's renewable oil and bioproducts production facilities worldwide.

Before Harris Group, Warner was responsible for the design and construction of one of the largest biodiesel production facilities in the U.S., Imperium Renewables’ Grays Harbor facility, as vice president of engineering for Imperium. He also led project development of several advanced biofuel production facilities in the U.S., Argentina, Europe and Asia, according to Solazyme.

"Mark brings a very senior level of management experience with extensive technological expertise and a proven track record of building out commercial-scale success to Solazyme,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme. “He is an internationally recognized leader and expert in the area of renewable energy commercialization including facility development, construction and operational deployment. He has been involved in many of the largest plants in the renewable space. I am confident that he will lead Solazyme through this important phase of expansion to commercial production capacity.”

Warner is a professional engineer with 26 years of broad-ranging business, technical, and management experience in the building and development of renewable energy projects and chemical plant operations.

“I look forward to working to put steel in the ground,” Warner said, “and rapidly building out the renewable oil production capacity to meet the demands for these breakthrough tailored oils as [Solazyme] reaches its next phase in commercialization. This is the most groundbreaking, exciting, scalable technology I have worked on in all of my years in the business, and it is great to be a part of this dynamic company.”