Cleaning up with science

By Jennifer Campbell – Telegraph Journal | link to original article
Tired of washing the chemicals off your lettuce with the same vigour as you clean your dirty gym clothes? A New Brunswick company is hoping to change that.

In response to a growing demand for safe pesticides, two Mount Allison University professors have been quietly working – for the past 10 years – on a solution. As consumers well know, crops grown in Canada and abroad often contain chemical pesticides that can be harmful to human health and the environment. But food producers depend on pesticides, which ultimately protect crop yields and profits.

Still, organics occupy a certain segment of the market, and consumers are increasingly demanding entirely “green” alternatives. That's the market SustainaChem Solutions hopes to enter. Its product is a new pesticide derived from Boron, a non-toxic, naturally occurring earth element that's safe for human consumption and the environment.

The members of the SustainaChem Solutions business team, one of six to become finalists in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation's Breakthru business competition, is actually made up of students, not the principals in the company. The principals, and at this point the two sole owners, are both Mount Allison professors. Steve Westcott, professor in boron chemistry, synthesizes the pesticide compounds while Felix Baerlocher, professor of biology, tests the product. Their business advocates, on the other hand, are five fourth-year business students taking a class called “venture capital and the finance of innovation.” They designed a business plan for the science professors and then presented it to the NBIF program, ultimately winning a spot among the top-six finalists. They find out at a gala in Fredericton Wednesday, who wins the top prize.

The other finalists are all budding entrepreneurs representing themselves but in this case the professors are sending the students to do their business bidding. And while the students don't get any shares in the company if they end up winning, they do get grades, and that's fine with them.

“It's been a lot of work but I have to say I've never learned more,” Kaila Thomasson said. “It's been a great experience; I wouldn't trade it for anything.”

She said the professors needed someone to kick-start the business side of this challenge they've been addressing in their labs for a decade.

“We came in and started their business,” Thomasson said.

“We incorporated it, began the patent process and wrote them a business plan, which they can then modify to their needs. It gets the business started in the hopes that in a few years, it'll be profit-making.”

If team SustainaChem succeeds in winning the grand prize of $100,000 or one of the two second-place prizes of $50,000, all of which come with substantial business perks including legal, accounting and branding services, some of the money will go toward hiring a lab technician who would expedite the process of getting the compound ready for market.

Although Thomasson can't talk in detail about the science – because there's a patent application pending – she said it's a boron-based pesticide. It has simplified ingredients, just three, which change depending on what you're deriving. That means the production process is reduced from about 40 steps to two or three.

“But the effectiveness isn't sacrificed,” she said. “Once it's done its job of eliminating fungi, plants or bacteria, it degrades to become a plant nutrient. So it's kind of a cycle in that it's giving back more to the environment than it's taking out.”

At this point, they're testing the pesticide on fungus but they predict it will work as an insecticide, herbicide or fungicide.

When they were writing the business plan, the students looked at industry trends and figured the way to go was to get a licensing deal with either DuPont or Syngenta Canada. The industry is highly regulated now, Thomasson said.

“It's also as effective as what's on the market now, maybe even more so, depending on what happens in the trial phases,” she said. “Once the industry realizes the benefits, it will take the industry by storm and hopefully make current pesticides obsolete because I don't think many of us want them hanging around much longer.”

She said they've already had interest from both DuPont and Syngenta and since entering the competition other companies have approached them.

“If it does what it's designed to do, it has a lot of profit-making capabilities. Our financials had great projections,” she said.

They forecasted net income (after expenses and taxes) at $1.6 million for 2014 and $1.9 million for 2015, based on a licensing agreements with companies, which does mean those numbers depend on their sales.

Last in a series about innovators to be honoured at the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation Breakthru gala tonight in Fredericton. Tickets for the dinner are available at www.nbif.ca.