Notes from the Circular Economy Front Lines: A fast company and its slow-release fertilizer

February 1, 2017 | Jim Lane

There’s a new and fascinating way to improve plant yield and farmer income, and it’s high technology in service of a very ancient idea — in this case, “slow and steady wins the race” — applied in this case to controlled-release fertilizer.

The company is called Anuvia Plant Nutrients and it has built a small first commercial plant in Zellwood, Florida. The kicker? It’s using organic waste otherwise headed for the landfill, to create its fertilizer magic.

Those slow-release fertilizers

Granulated fertilizers have been around for quite a number of years. Most of them aim to stabolize the rate of nitrogen release. Scotts, Georgia-Pacific, Agrium and Growth Products are some of the companies that market a range of them. Overall, there’s a 10%+ yield bump, reduced risk of fertilizer burn and less labor cost in re-application. So, they’re popular. But not very sustainable, and companies are looking for sustainable options.

So that’s where Anuvia comes in . They move growers towards that Circular Economy where the organic waste, post-consumption, becomes the recycled fertilizer input for the farm.

Can you get that indirect societal benefit, but at the same time provide a direct benefit to the grower, who needs something a little more direct, like some jingle in the pocket.

“Yield is the key measure for growers, and quality of crop,” CEO Amy Yoder told The Digest. That’s what they provide.

A docking station

“Think of it as a docking station for nutrients,” said Yoder. “We bind nutrient to our complex, and the plant can pull up those nutrients as needed, over time.”

Put in human terms, think of it like going to the grocery store when food is needed, or a controlled-release medicine that dispenses itself through a timed drip.

The Economics — why it is cost-competitive with low-cost fossil fuels

In this case, the input is even cheaper than fracked gas. It’s negative cost organic waste that the company receiveds a tipping fee for — same as the landfills receive a tipping fee from waste dumpers. That’s a kicker for the economics and ultimately, Anuvia expects the tipping fees to wither waay as waste becomes a source of value.

But it helps, especially when the company is starting out. So, Anuvia is sold at a competitive cost and usage volumes to a standard product with a goal of winning on plant yield and performance — but a grower using 100 units of nitrigen, say, would still use 100 units of N with Anuvia.

“It really matches up on cost,” Anuvia senior VP Hugh MacGillivray told The Digest. “Over time, users will figure out the advantages from the rate structure. One thing to keep in kind is that growers use blends — and Anuvia will be used in combination with other.products. And that’s fine, Anuvia can be used with another nitrogen source.”

Bottom line, it checks the economic box as well as the environmental, when it comes to “sustainability”.

So, the race for price focuses around the cost of the manufacturing process, scale, and distance from marlet. One of the reasons why Anuvia is focused on turf operations as a start — as many golfers would know, the nation’s turf operations cluster in the Southeast, keeping the transport distances down.

The Organic Waste Starting Point

“We like produsts that have been somewhat digested,” Yoder added. “ good example is

food waste that’s been through an anaerobic digester. Our sweet spot is 20 percent solids, 80 percent liquid.”

What do they use? The range is broad and can include reclaimed food waste, industrial organic waste, soybean whey, municpal organics, andmal organics from animal, digested waste (not rendered) from meat packing.

By combining manufacturing techniques with a patented two-stage hydrolysis process, we form the building blocks of novel plant nutrition products with TRX Technology.

The resulting plant nutrient products are made up of dry, homogenous granules. Through TRX Technology, it reduces nutrient losses to the environment while increasing nutrient availability for the plant by slowing the release of nutrients for uptake and protecting against leaching and volatilization.

The Fertilizer Delivery

The Organic MaTRX is a natural and intuitive delivery system unlike any other. It is made from combining electrostatically charged (positive and negative) organic particles that provide docking sites for desired nutrients. These substances come in the forms of ions like ammonium (NH4+), potassium (K+), sulfate (SO4-) and ferrous iron (Fe2+), all of which are easily taken up by plants and less susceptible to loss via leaching or volatilization.

Anuvia-Manufacturing-Process-Chart

Who’s the customer?

Conceptually, anyone growing anything — homeowners, ultimately, and farmers. The initial market has been turf managers.

Expansion

The compamny has an 80,000 ton capacity in Zellwood, used for business development and for moving into initial markets. Ultimately the aim is 4-5 plants in the 120-150,000 ton scale, each one close to a target market. Those will be on a build-own-operate basis.

The Bottom Line

We’ve been tracking yield intensification for some time — they power the advanced bioeconomy by providing an affordable route to surplus material. One of the most interesting technology thrusts is in fertilizer application and uptake. That’s making more use of the same inputs — and efficiency and sustainable yield improvement is the antidote to fears of land-use change or the dangers of fertilizer run-off.

So, a lot is riding on the shoulders of companies like Anuvia. It’s a docking station for nutrients — but might well be a launching pad for the kind of crop abundance that provides the feedstock for an advanced bioeconomy without the rising costs that usually come from boosting supply.