Page 7 - BusinessWest April 1, 2024

“We read a lot of his papers and actually built a prototype of the technol- ogy we’re using today from schematics he had put in one of his publications,” White recalled. “And it worked, or seemed to work, and that was good enough for us to go out and meet him and visit his lab, and we started Clean Crop with him in early 2019.”
Early-stage work was focused pri- marily on the peanut industry, he said, adding that, when the technology was validated, a machine was taken to a peanut sheller in Georgia that was interested in piloting it. That pilot went well, he said, adding that the peanut company essentially said to come back when the machine was a thousand times bigger.
The partners agreed, but knew
the pathway to commercialization involved several smaller levels of scal- ing before getting to that point. In the meantime, starting in the spring of 2021, they started exploring several other markets — everything from other high-value nuts to shelf-life extension for ground beef, seafood, and dairy products, and, eventually seeds.
“One of the most compelling reasons that we moved here, long-term, is the municipal hydro dam.”
Seed Money
Explaining the technology in some- what simple terms, White said Clean Crop combines food-grade gases and electricity to create cold plasma, thus inactivating a broad spectrum of con- taminants from seed surfaces in a dry, automated, and residue-free process.
Seeds travel through a hopper
in a class-7 clean room and onto a proprietary conveyance mechanism where they then get exposed to the Clean Current ionized gases and are decontaminated before moving on for further processing. At present, the technology can process 25 pounds of seed per hour.
The seeds are shipped to Holyoke, where they are processed, bagged aseptically, and shipped back to cus- tomers, who are charged a flat fee
per pound. These customers come in two categories — growers, especially those in the greenhouse, micro-green, and sprouts markets that are con- cerned about molds, but also food- safety risks; and also seed companies, specializing mostly in high-value veg- etables such as leafy greens, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, radishes, and others.
The goals moving forward are
to expand that customer base, scale up operations, grow market share, and eventually sell the machines to customers.
“Right now, we only have one machine operating, but we’re looking to significantly expand our capacity this year,” said White, adding that the com- pany has a large backlog of work. “Our goal this year is to scale our operations to absorb as much of that demand as possible and get our machines out into the world to customer facilities.
“Our long-term vision is that we want our machines to be operating in every seed-processing facility globally as the first line of defense in crop loss,”
he went on. “To get there ... it’s a non- trivial challenge to develop not just the manufacturing side of a company, but the company success. To be able to sup- port a remote set of machines is a chal- lenge, one that we want to grow into once we figure out the supply chain.”
Elaborating, White said the com- pany, which is still in what he calls phase 1 of its development, will bring
a second machine online in the near future, greatly increasing its capacity for serving customers, and scaling from there, bringing several machines with much larger capacities online. The goal is to have machines in at least 50 seed processors around the world by 2030,
giving Clean Crop perhaps 10% of the global market and $100 million in annual revenues.
Doing all that will take capital, he said, adding that the company is well- capitalized and is committed to staying, and growing, in Holyoke, with oppor- tunities to expand in its current space and into other space nearby if the need arises, while taking advantage of the city’s abundant and comparatively inex- pensive green energy.
“One of the most compelling rea- sons that we moved here, long-term,
Clean
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