UMaine, Waterville co. launch paper industry innovation
Photo/Courtesy Tony Jabar
Tony Jabar, founder and CEO of Cerealus Holdings in Waterville
A chemist from Waterville and the University of Maine have begun commercializing an innovative green technology that could help increase the efficiency and quality of papermaking here and abroad.
Tony Jabar, founder and CEO of Cerealus Holdings, says his new retention technology called Ceregel involves the use of grain-based "superstarch" molecules that would allow mills to make certain grades of paper stronger while lowering production costs and reducing the loss of raw materials in the process.
"Right now our goal is to aggressively find prospects, and we've already approached a couple of mills in Maine about it," says Jabar, who started the company in 2004 to develop sustainable, plant-based technologies for a variety of industrial and consumer uses. "The best part is that the mills can use their existing equipment with this process. There is no capital expenditure for specialized equipment."
Cerealus signed an exclusive commercialization licensing agreement on Feb. 3 with the Process Development Center at the University of Maine in Orono, which holds five patents covering the novel technology. Michael Bilodeau, the center's director, told Mainebiz the university received the donated patents in 2003 from DuPont, which first developed the technology but eventually decided not to pursue its industrial use.
The university will provide technical assistance to help Jabar commercialize the new technology. "UMaine won the bid for the patents because we had the best commercialization plan," says Bilodeau, chief scientific adviser for the Ceregel project.
Jabar first teamed up with the UMaine center in 2004, when he was developing a way to use protein from corn as a non-toxic, biodegradable, oil-and-grease-resistant compound to coat the paper packaging that holds fast foods such as microwave popcorn, pizza, burgers and beverages.
He came up with the idea after learning that the 3M company had discontinued the production of original-formula Scotchgard, its popular and highly profitable stain-resistant upholstery spray over public concerns about the health effects of the fluorinated compounds it contained. Because those same chemicals are used to coat food-grade paper packaging, Jabar, who had worked in research and development for Monsanto and the National Starch Co., decided that corn protein could be a much safer, readily available alternative.
In collaboration with UMaine, Jabar got two seed grants of about $10,000 each from the Maine Technology Institute, which he was able to match with nearly $30,000. Convinced of the project's potential environmental and economic benefits, MTI later provided the company with a development award of about $185,000.
Jabar managed to get a small processing plant up and running with a corn-growing company in China, but that deal eventually fell through. He has since partnered with a company in Iowa that will extract the protein from corn and reformulate it into the paper-coating product called HOLDOUT.
"We've been working with a number of paper companies in the U.S. and we hope to have it in commercial production within the next four to five months," says Jabar, whose privately held company pays royalties to UMaine based on the licensing fees it takes in.
Although Cerealus has yet to generate much revenue from its bio-based products, which include general purpose adhesives and a paper-based alternative to the plastic mulch used in farming, Jabar says the two products now in the works hold great promise both for his three-person operation and the paper mills that choose to adopt the environmentally friendly technology.
U.S. companies produce 80 to 90 million tons of the specific grade of paper suited to the Cerealus technology, he says, and Europe accounts for 40 to 50 million tons more.
"So this is a potentially huge market for us," Jabar says. "The paper industry is a really tough business globally, and mills are always looking for ways to be more efficient and increase quality and save money."
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