Pivoting from Plants-to-Food to Plants-to-X – What’s the future of Ag?

Reaction from the stakeholders

“Most consumers don’t always know all of the ingredients in the products they buy, but they do notice when their laundry detergent doesn’t work or when their shampoo doesn’t foam and won’t rinse out,” said Paul Dauenhauer, co-founder of Sironix and Professor in Chemical Engineering & Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. “The hard water performance of the Eosix surfactant is designed to solve not just that but also to change the game entirely for consumer products. With this round of funding, we plan to partner with the brands consumers already know to get the Eosix surfactant into laundry rooms and bathrooms. This round of funding will help us work with chemical manufacturers and product brands to prove out our technology on a much bigger scale and bring the Eosix surfactant to a first customer.”

“Consumers are increasingly demanding sustainability and safety from the products they purchase, but don’t want to sacrifice on performance or pay a premium. Our Eosix technology checks the box on all of these requirements,” said Christoph Krumm, CEO and co-founder of Sironix Renewables. “The continued support of our funding sources, including the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Energy, is a testament to the incredible work that the Sironix team and its many partners have accomplished over the past four years as well as the confidence they have in our teams’ ability to achieve our vision.”

“Sironix is a great company that reflects the University of Minnesota’s leadership in green chemistry and successful startups based on faculty inventions,” said Russ Straate, associate director at the Venture Center at the University of Minnesota, which operates the Discovery Capital Investment program. “It’s been exciting to watch, advise and support the Sironix team as they have taken this technology from invention in 2016 to their recent joint development agreement and a new phase of progress with scaling and partnerships.”

Before we move onto fermentation, Krumm had this to say about plant-based products:

“It’s refreshing and inspiring to see the world really start to embrace the power of plant-based products and foods. I think the biobased industry has made leaps and bounds over the last few years to show that plant-based materials aren’t only better for the environment, but that we can harness nature to make something that’s better than what we use now. We’ve seen it with things like the Impossible Burger and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do for cleaning products.”

An in terms of his thoughts on how companies are replacing agriculture with fermentation like Perfect Day or Impossible Foods vs. companies that are improving the use and characteristics of plants and optimizing agriculture, Krumm told The Digest:

“With the urgency of climate change we’re facing on this planet, we need every and all possible innovations to help our cause. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last 6 months it’s that supply chains can fall into shambles very quickly, which is exactly why it’s great that the biobased industry is pushing on all fronts to develop climate-friendly solutions.”

We couldn’t have said it any better.

Go to next page for more on this story and how food and fermentation fits in.