Customer Demand Sparks AgroRenew's Accelerated Construction

Customer demand sparks AgroRenew's accelerated construction

Published by Vincennes Sun-Commercial

VINCENNES — AgroRenew will build stage three of their bioplastics facility at the same time as the stage one and stage two projects after customers have ordered 100% of the plastic that the company can produce in the first two phases of construction, Brian Southern, CEO of AgroRenew, announced at the Knox County Indiana Economic Development Corp. annual meeting Wednesday.

“We have customers who want our product so much they’ve already given us orders,” he said, estimating all the plastic the company could make is essentially sold up through 2027.

For those who don’t know, AgroRenew is a Knox County startup that will convert watermelon, cantaloupe and pumpkin waste into bioplastic–a non-petroleum plastic that breaks down instead of languishing long term in landfills or requiring additional recycling.

At full production Southern estimates they’ll produce 300,000 tons of bioplastic a year, representing 550 million pounds of food waste pre-drying and processing. That’s more food waste than Knox County can provide, meaning Southern will also draw from growers in Illinois, Florida, Delaware, Texas and California. The diversity in those growing seasons will represent enough material for the company to manufacture year round. The company can also use cover crop materials.

The food will not be shipped as-is, either, risking spoilage. Instead of shipping the massive amount of water the produce represents, the company has pioneered a mobile drying process, with equipment that will exist at the farm, so that by the time the material ships it will be dried. Where farmers once paid someone to take food waste, they’ll now profit from it, as will AgroRenew.

The mobile drying will mean even very rural farmers will have the opportunity to contribute to the production.

“We wouldn’t be doing this just for the environmental impact,” he added, saying the company will be profitable and economically improve the entire county.

Origin Story

The company grew out of a problem the Mouzin Brothers posed at The Pantheon, which was what to do with a surplus of melon when crops outweighed market demand or part of a crop didn’t make the grade. There’s only so much watermelon juice, watermelon rind pickles or even melon jerky that people would want —compared to 1.6 billion pounds in food waste each year.

Southern has dairy farming and corn farming grandparents, while he is, by trade a chemical and electrical engineer, on top of being a serial entrepreneur in food processing.

Katie Southern, his wife, is a food scientist. Together they looked at the chemical properties of melon to find readily available ingredients that would pair with the food waste to transform dried melon into plastic in a way that wouldn’t have been possible just 20 years ago, given the science and manufacturing capabilities at that time.

Economic Ripple Effect

The company has hired a management team, will have 77 team members hired by the end of this year, and is building a manufacturing facility off of US-41N in the industrial park managed by KCIEDC. They’re targeting more than a team of 300 employees by 2027.

“For every job we hire in manufacturing…it indirectly impacts by creating three other jobs in the community.” The total impact of having the new industry will have a net effect of 1000 new jobs, Southern said.

The company plans onsite childcare and also includes an Innovation Center that is a partnership between AgroRenew, multiple plastic companies, the USDA, the US military, research scientists and engineers. The project also includes building a rail spur that will make the industrial park attractive to other manufacturers.

Southern discussed the desire to create a cluster of industry around bioplastics that would center on Knox County. The emerging market of bioplastics had 29% growth last year.

“Our profits are going to stay here in the community,” he said. “We’re looking at our second plant already.”

The Process

Southern held up a small beaker of dried material, and explained that the small amount of dry dust inside was an entire watermelon.

Farmers will turn their food waste into dry particles on the farm, then they will ship that dust to AgroRenew. That dust will undergo a proprietary manufacturing process, using varied temperatures and additives until it becomes a completely biodegradable substance the company will extrude into pellets.

Those pellets will be interchangeable with the petroleum based pellets manufacturers are currently using to create things like straws and plastic bags among other items; allowing the AgroRenew product to substitute into their current manufacturing without any changing of the machines they already use.

Environmental Impact

“I’m going to start with a basic understanding that the Earth needs our help,” Southern said as he opened his address to the stakeholders at the economic development meeting.

He presented a bleak picture, saying only 9% of the plastic recycled each year becomes new, repurposed plastic.

A large portion of plastic designated for recycling is incinerated, which can have a separate detrimental effect on the environment. About 79% of it, however, still ends up in landfills.

Outside of the state of Washington a 150 ton plastic island floats and grows, even as states begin legislating plastic consumption.

“This is when innovation happens,” Southern said, pointing at the problem of single-use plastics that would become the opportunity.

AgroRenews bioplastic won’t need recycled, Southern said. Instead it will become soil in a short amount of time.

“This is the solution. The industry knows it,” he said.