Our approach was that either epichlorohydrin epimerization would need to be fully suppressed or that consumption of epichlorohydrin would need to be decreased in order to negate the requirement of starting material recycle. We first explored suppression of epimerization with the thought that at lower temperatures, the rate of substrate racemization might be significantly slower. The esterification was run at 60 °C in high assay yield. At this temperature, the enantiomeric ratio increased from 50:50 to 90:10 (Table , Entries 1-2). While this was a positive development, further improvements were required. The high assay yield was maintained at 50 °C, and enantiomeric ratio was elevated to 95:5 (Entry 3). This moved the conditions toward economic viability, however, even slight erosion of optical activity limits the ability to recycle epichlorohydrin.