CoverCress Inc. and it’s university partners were named ‘Inventor of the Year’ by the Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Section of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis – recognition of the huge potential this small St. Louis ag-tech company represents.
Tim Ulmasov, CoverCress CTO
“I’m totally thrilled… I tell everybody it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” CoverCress Chief Technology Officer Tim Ulmasov told the 4thEst8 after the BAMSL announcement. “How many crops – really large acreage crops – are here in the North America, even in the world? You can probably count them on one hand in North America and probably on upon two hands worldwide. Ours will hopefully become another large crop, similar to canola.”
Patented
The 4thEst8 first told you about CoverCress when the company landed its first patent in the summer of 2020. CoverCress is selectively breeding the pennycress plant to reduce the fiber in its seeds by as much as 50 percent, thereby increasing both the oil it produces, and the nutritional value of the meal that remains after the oil is extracted. This patent covers taking that meal and turning it into animal feed. Unmodified pennycress variants are generally considered weeds, but CoverCress is developing a variety (also called CoverCress) intended as a ‘cover crop’ – to improve soil conditions and diversity over the winter, in between fall harvest and spring planting of row crops like corn and soybean. The bonus is that with the lower volume of fiber, CoverCress seeds effectively produce more oil and plant proteins – giving farmers another cash crop.
Business Basics:
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CEO Jerry Steiner
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20 full time employees
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VC Raised – $11.9M
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Patent issued 2020
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$10M USDA Grant, Sept. 2019
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Founded, 2013 as Arvegenix
Right now the company has ‘foundation’ fields planted with its seed varieties to produce the seed stock that will be commercially available for the winter growing season of 2021-2022 – all leading up to a harvest in the late spring (or early summer) of 2022. But CoverCress has an entire supply chain to put in place – they’re putting agreements together right now with ‘crushers’ to process the grain into co-products of oil and meal. The meal can go into animal feed. (And possibly – some day – a meat alternative for human consumption: see the 4thEst8 article link at the bottom of this story.)
“The company will make money when the first sale will happen, which would be in May, or rather maybe June, of 2022,” said Ulmasov. “It is a monumental task. Because because in addition to just the, you know, building, the technology company like ours has to create the entire supply chain to create the assets that fulfill the product or this supply chain, including the end users, such as, you know, biodiesel producers, for example, in the energy market, or the animal feed users or the food users. So we’re working with a multitude of companies to create that.”
The BAMSL honor would normally come with an awards dinner, but because of the pandemic this year’s recipients will join the 2022 award recipients at a joint ceremony, at a time and place that has yet to be determined. (BAMSL did not immediately respond to a request for information for this article.)
1st Patent Awarded to Ag-Tech Startup with $7M in VC
