Come together | Bar Harbor-based Soyatech creates an international conference on soy food and fuel
Peter Golbitz has come a long way since he launched a Bar Harbor-based tofu business in 1979 that purveyed Happy Pig brand soysauge. While that business wasn't a success — Golbitz says the company was too removed from the markets and his suppliers — he says it offered an excellent learning curve that ultimately made him an internationally recognized expert in the oilseed and soy food industries.
Golbitz in 1986 turned his soy foods business into an industry consulting firm called Soyatech, which publishes the Soya & Oilseed Bluebook — the industry standard for information on the soy food and biofuels business. (See "Bean encounter," April 4, 2005.) After growing that publishing and consulting business for 20 years, on September 18 Golbitz will reach another major milestone as he presides over Soyatech's first industry conference, "Soya Summit 2006: Food & Energy for the 21st Century," held in St. Louis, Mo. The three-day event will bring together for the first time leaders from the food and energy industries to explore key issues in the emerging market for soy-based products. With the U.S. soy food industry alone a $4 billion-a-year business, and consumption in Asia significantly higher, Golbitz expects the conference to be a world-class event, with 35 speakers and an expected 200 attendees from 16 countries. "I always had a vision of playing a larger role and that's where I wanted the company to be headed," Golbitz says.
Despite his longstanding goal of producing a conference, Golbitz says he hasn't had the resources to do so until this year. That's because in January, Golbitz sold his company to Boston-based management consulting firm HighQuest Partners for an undisclosed amount. With HighQuest's financial backing, Golbitz added two employees at its Bar Harbor headquarters and is expanding Soyatech's reach. Instead of one industry report, Soyatech next year plans to release six reports on topics such as biofuels, soy foods, soy protein and value-added seed traits, Golbitz says. And Soyatech already is planning two conferences for 2007 — another in the Midwest and one in Latin America or Asia.
Part of the imperative for this expansion, says Golbitz, is the global question of how to produce enough food and fuel for the planet's inhabitants while also dealing with competition for soybean and oilseed resources between those two industries. He sees a company such as Soyatech, with its focus on the dissemination of information for the oilseed and soy food industries, playing a major role in helping companies discover new ways to meet growing global demand. "By [providing information about soy foods] we're taking away the big fear of there not being enough food for everybody," Golbitz says.
He's also not content to remain solely focused on soybeans and oilseeds. Golbitz would like to apply Soyatech's research skills to parallel industries, such as renewable energy resources. Still, his global focus doesn't mean Golbitz has forgotten his backyard. He says Maine's agriculture sector has an opportunity for production of crops such as soy and canola that could in turn provide oil for food processing. For example, Maine potato farmers could turn over some of their acres to grow oilseed crops to produce oil to harvest and process potatoes. "It would be a small portion of what we need," Golbitz says. "But we could turn the northern part of the state into soybean acreage and create a stable and efficient Maine economy."
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