Delta tries to Tap Weed for Rubber

By Kathy McCarron
Rubber & Plastics News Correspondent

AKRON—At first glance it might look like a futile effort: developing what looks like a common lawn weed into a domestically grown alternative to the rubber tree to create a natural rubber industry in the U.S. Yet with the shortage and high costs of natural rubber from Asia and armed with funding and support from U.S. concerns, a small company called Delta Plant Technologies Inc. has confidence such a business plan will work.

Developing a domestic source of natural rubber is hardly a new concept. Many have tried—especially during World War II, in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union—but only the desert shrub guayule has been commercialized, and that for a specialty, hypoallergenic use.

Delta, based in Akron, is focusing its efforts on developing and commercially growing the “Taraxacum kok-saghyz,” or TKS, also known as the Russian dandelion. Not your lawn variety weed, this plant “is a dandelion on steroids,” according to Delta President Bryan Kinnamon.

A new foundation

Fred Anderson, a former Boeing Co. executive, founded Delta Plant Technologies about four years ago. Later he enlisted to his cause two former Goodyear executives—Kinnamon, who was his Massachusetts Institute of Technology classmate, and John Lawrence.

Kinnamon admits the three veteran corporate executives could be relaxing on the beach, enjoying their retirement. But they have such faith in this project that the principal partners have been working diligently, and without a salary. The company “headquarters” is based in Kinnamon’s home.

“We’re not like a conventional start-up company,” he said. “It truly is forming a foundation for a strategic new industry.”

Delta’s business plan is bolstered by funding from a regional foundation and the support of two North American tire companies— Kinnamon wouldn’t reveal which ones, just that Good-year isn’t one of them— that have agreed to be development partners with Delta to certify its research. Delta is in partnership with Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center to conduct research.

Cleveland-based JumpStart Inc., an entrepreneurial development and funding organization that invests in Ohio ventures, is providing Delta with $660,000 in funding. JumpStart focuses on early stage ventures that have a strong potential for high growth, making $30 million to $50 million within five to seven years, said Mozelle Jackson, JumpStart’s executive- in-residence for Delta.

JumpStart typically invests with convertible debt, she said, acknowledging that early-stage ideas, such as Delta’s, come with high risks. “But that’s our model. We’re risk-takers. We’re looking for ideas and businesses that will bring additional money into the (northeast Ohio) region.

” “We’re very optimistic this can be done successfully,” said Kinnamon. “It’s been done (during World War II). We’re validating and doing it again.” While they were able to obtain records on the past research, a lot was lost from 60 years ago, including the cross-bred seed bank the Soviet Union had developed.

The original research was spurred during World War II when the supply of natural rubber from Asia was curtailed. The U.S. researched rubber-bearing plants that could be grown domestically, particularly guayule, goldenrod and TKS. Russia also experimented with TKS.

But then, like the tale of many alternative products, the plant’s development was shelved when natural rubber imports returned to full steam and the prices dropped.

Meeting a need

Fast-forward to 2006 and the natural rubber supply available to the U.S. tire industry again is shrinking and prices are skyrocketing as the industrialization of India and China increases demand for Asia’s NR.

Kinnamon is unfamiliar with any other company that has investigated domesticated plants for NR. “There hasn’t been a strategic need like there is today with the natural rubber shortage and pending fuel needs.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been researching the commercial cultivation of latex-producing plants, with one project focusing on the indigenous guayule plant as a source of hypoallergenic latex for medical products. Yulex Corp. holds the exclusive license to patented guayule latex technology developed by the USDA.

The USDA also has looked at the Russian dandelion, sunflowers and rubber-producing tobacco plants. And in his time, inventor Thomas Edison conducted 17,000 experiments trying to find a source of natural rubber, some with dandelions, which he considered particularly promising.

Kinnamon said that while he worked at Goodyear, the company researched the potential for guayule as a source for tire rubber in the 1980s but abandoned the idea. Firestone, too, did research, and for a time ran a processing plant in Arizona.

Kinnamon has much higher hopes for TKS than guayule. “I believe (TKS) to be a viable source of natural rubber,” he said.

Currently, nearly all the natural rubber used by tire manufacturers comes from tapping Hevea rubber trees grown mainly in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, said Kinnamon. But the trees mostly are grown by individual farmers on 5-10 acre plots and the process of tapping the rubber tree for the sap cannot be automated, he said.

Conversely, the alternative annual plant, which has the latex sap in its roots, can be densely cultivated. Harvesting the sap can be automated and the annual crop supply can be adjusted for demand. He said about 10 million pounds of rubber could be produced annually with 10,000 acres of TKS crop. The byproduct of the extraction would be about 2.3 million gallons of ethanol, an alternative fuel that could be sold to offset the cost. Not only does the plant provide the potential source for a new industry, it also could provide farmers with a commercial crop option. “Farmers basically are not making money on their (food) crops,” Kinnamon said. “This alternative crop would support rural development.

“There are no drawbacks (to TKS), assuming the crop can develop sufficient rubber per acre,” Kinnamon said. The physical properties of the plant rubber won’t be identical to the natural rubber of the Hevea tree, he said, so like any new material, the filler compound for tires would have to undergo the process of being adapted to specific applications. “Even different grades of rubber go through that,” he said. There would be subtle differences in processing but the equipment, such as the mixers and calenders, would be the same.

The business plan calls for establishing processing plants for rubber extraction near the crops.

Moving forward

At this point “there is a significant amount of work to do,” said Kinnamon, including finding the right plant with high rubber percentages and the right carbohydrate percentages.

“It requires a significant amount of agronomic work,” he said. “Knowing what to do isn’t the problem. The emphasis is in doing it—taking the plants, cross-breeding and get to the point where we can hit a milestone.”

The OARDC is working on domestication of the plant and figuring out the details of how to fertilize, breed and reproduce it.

The company’s objective is to have a semi-operational facility running and selling some product by 2008 or 2009 and then scale up after that.