GreenValue captures natural polymers from biomass in India

About two million people die every year from diarrhea, a high number of them children.

And toxic aflatoxins, which are naturally occurring metabolites produced by various fungi species, are a pervasive problem in India. In one severe case in northwest India in the 1970s, 25 percent of the population died after eating molded maize with high aflatoxin levels.

Lausanne, Switzerland-based GreenValue thinks it has a cleantech product that could help combat such health issues, and it is already making headway in the agricultural sector. The company is focused, as its name implies, on extracting value in the form of natural polymers captured from vegetable biomass, in what it says is a cost efficient way.

CEO Adil Barakat told the Cleantech Group today the research and development company founded in 1997 is now ready to step up its marketing efforts and accelerate commercialization.

Its products comes from lignins, or polyphenols, located in the cell walls of plants, which can be removed from pulp and paper production activities. The extraction process uses hydrolysis, he said, without divulging details of the proprietary patented technology.

“The whole trick is how to recover only specific portions of the polyphenols,” he said.

Sarkanda grass, in the sugar cane family, grows in the swamps of India’s Punjab region and is a good source of lignins, as it grows wild, without contamination or genetic engineering, Barakat said.

In 2004, GreenValue secured a joint venture with Indian paper company ABC Paper, which also invested an undisclosed amount in the company. GreenValue has been extracting raw materials from ABC Paper’s processes at its first polyphenol recovery production facility in Punjab to treat ABC's effluents, Barakat said.

The facility is capable of recovering 5,000 to 6,000 tons of polyphenols a year from sources such as wheat, straw, bagasses and sarkanda grass. The process reduces the load of the pulping effluent by 50 percent and makes it easily biodegradable, he said.

The company has shown success with its products in cattle and poultry, testing it as an antioxidant, anti-bacterial, a digestibility enhancer and immunity booster, to name a few. The company’s current customers in the farming and livestock sectors are located in India, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada.

GreenValue is looking to eventually market its products in the United States, with plans to open additional recovery production facilities in South America, Asia and North America.

“It’s great if you can protect animals,” Barakat said. “It’s even better if you can do something for humans.”

Over the past six months, the company has been involved with human trials of its products, with applications in the nutritional and health supplement market, as an immune booster to prevent against diarrhea, for example. It plans to distribute its products through non-governmental organizations and governments.

Although the company has an immediate focus on ag and human health, the product also has industrial applications as a partial replacement for phenolic resin, used in plywood, medium-density fiberboard and other insulating materials, he said. It could replace part of oil-based materials with natural ones.

The 48-employee company, which has been funded with $10 million to date from its management and private investors, is now seeking $10 million to commercialize its products, as well as strategic partnerships. GreenValue isn’t currently profitable, but is bringing in about $2 million in revenue annually.

Barakat said the global economic recession has affected the company and others in the Swiss region, drying up funding sources and leading to cutbacks.

Other cleantech companies are also pursuing nutraceutical applications for their technologies. A subsidiary of Ashkelon, Israel-based Seambiotic grows and processes marine microalgae for the nutraceutical and biofuel industries (see Seambiotic, NASA team up to optimize algae growth).

And earlier this year, two U.S.-based renewable biochemical companies announced a partnership, with Blue Marble Energy producing high-margin biochemicals from microalgae supplied by Bionavitas (see Blue Marble, Bionavitas ink biochemicals-from-algae deal). Bionavitas developed what it has branded as Light Immersion Technology, which it says enables the speedy and cost-effective production of algae for environmental remediation, manufacturing health and nutraceutical products, and producing biofuels.

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• WaterMaker India looks to bring down air-to-water costs
• Nexamp closes Series A round, brings on new CEO
• Water innovation beyond desal: the new opportunities?

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed