The company employs a unique technology to produce low-cost sugars from non-food plant materials and the resulting biomass is used to produce bio-fuels, bio-chemicals, and bio-plastics.
Commenting on the investment Sweetwater chief financial officer Keith Wilson said, "This funding is already launching us into our next stage of development, which includes Sweetwater’s first commercial contracts and the design and fabrication of the first wave of facilities for 2013."
New York-based Sweetwater had initially raised $1.2m as seed funding to develop its decentralized sugar platform technology.
Sweetwater will construct a demonstration-scale facility using the same technology in Rochester, NY to apply final touches to its commercial plans.
"In 2013, we expect to have somewhere between two and four operational," Wilson told Bloomberg on its future plans.
The company expects its plants to produce 100 tons of biomass per day, which can be used as feedstock to produce 3.4m gallons of ethanol per annum.
