May 7th, 2024 – Elaine Watson of AgFunder News featured an interview with Clean Crop CEO & Co-Founder Dan White on launching the world’s first cold-plasma treatment facility, having signed $3.4 million in purchase orders, with a sales and pilot pipeline worth $47 million in annual recurring revenue from companies that represent 39% of the global vegetable seed market. See excerpt below:
What is high voltage atmospheric cold plasma technology (HVACP)?
Clean Crop Technologies deploys high voltage atmospheric cold plasma technology (HVACP) to inactivate a broad spectrum of contaminants from seed surfaces in a dry, automated, and residue-free process, says CEO Dan White.
“We’re using electricity to generate ionized or highly energetic gases to preferentially break down certain microbes, without harming the quality [of the food] in the process. We have the ability to tune those gases so we’re preferentially breaking down stuff that is traditionally very hard to do, so things like Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli, and a wide range of mycotoxins.”
“We started out looking at post-harvest applications and we’ve done a lot of work on mycotoxin mold reduction, but for the next several years, we’ve decided to focus exclusively on seeds,” White told AgFunderNews.
On Clean Crop’s recent launch of commercial treatment in the world’s first cold-plasma seed tolling facility:
“In 2023, we built out our first commercial system, and now we have a piece of commercial hardware that’s at scale for vegetable seeds. We have a tolling line, which is pretty typical for seed treatments, so customers send us the seed, and we treat [decontaminate] it [with ionized gases] in our class 7 cleanroom for a flat rate per pound. We then package it aseptically and send it back.”
Depending on the seed type and customer requirements, speeds range widely “from a few pounds to over a hundred pounds per hour per machine,” said White. “But we are building the machines for modularity, allowing us to match line speeds of hundreds of pounds per hour with multiple machines in parallel.”
Longer term, he anticipates Clean Crop Technologies’ machines will be operating at the seed companies themselves, added White, who is also working with growers in the greenhouse, micro-greens, and sprouts markets.
‘We’re seeing significant demand in high value vegetable seeds’
According to White: “We’re seeing significant demand in high value vegetable seeds such as broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, and this year is all about scaling capacity to meet that demand. But we also have a long pipeline of other applications in row crops and lower value vegetables such as spinach.”
He added: “Last year, we got our first machine up and running, figured out all the business operations to be able to run a tolling line, which is not trivial. We also secured clearance from the EPA to be able to make pesticidal claims, which was a really big win for us to be able to treat seeds. And then early this year, we got certified as an organic seed handler, which opens up that market for us also.”
Check out the full article here.
