Recipient Organization
STONY CREEK COLORS, INC.
3456 KNIGHT DR
WHITES CREEK,TN 371899188
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Stony Creek Colors sells clean and safe natural dyes to the textile and fashion industries, allowing its customers to offer environmentally conscious premium products. Through its flagship natural indigo product, the company has developed and proven a complete agricultural supply chain to replace synthetic dyes with plant-based drop-in solutions. Innovations across the complete crop and processing value chain allow Stony Creek to sustainably produce plant-based dyes with full transparency and authenticity, meeting the technical performance and volume requirements of textile mills and fashion brands worldwide without compromising product integrity. A guaranteed take-off agreement with a leading global denim mill partner ensures the company's bio-based dyes are in demand, and the naturally dyed denim resulting from this effort is currently being used in premier brands. Stony Creek Colors has demonstrated the commercial viability of the natural indigo supply chain having significantly scaled its operations in 2016, and it is now identifying and executing upon efficiencies made evident in the plant genetics, agricultural operations, and chemical processing activities. Through this NIFA/USDA-funded research effort, Stony Creek Colors is working to optimize the agricultural and industrial natural indigo supply chain by identifying, establishing, and refining scalable and efficient methods of indigo crop production and factory extraction which will allow bio-based indigo the opportunity to compete more closely with its synthetically manufactured counterpart.Natural indigo was once a driver of the world economy, with plantations existing across the globe which grew, cultivated, harvested and processed indigo crops into blue indigo dye. This was usually done through a multi-step but industrially simple and environmentally low-impact process. Following the discovery of a synthetic pathway to indigo dye at the turn of the 20th century, this agricultural crop and its bio-based dye product were quickly supplanted by a commodity industrial chemical synthesized from coal tar and petroleum derivatives. The textile dyeing and finishing industry is now responsible for 17% of industrial water pollution worldwide, and after the turn of the 21st century, consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the impact of their personal choices allowing socially and environmentally sustainable products to take market share. Major fashion brands like Levi's & Nike are now making purchasing decisions based on the full environmental and life cycle impact of their products, with a commitment to reduce hazardous chemical use to zero by 2020. Natural indigo is an obvious entry into this new market opportunity, representing a known story that once defined the denim jeans market. The incorporation of natural indigo into an existing brand or line of clothing represents a low-cost differentiator with significant customer resonance allowing for higher margins for mills and brands. However, as an agricultural crop and specialty bio-based product, consistent, reliable, and sizeable sources for natural indigo dye no longer exist in the global marketplace. Natural indigo dye and its parent agricultural crop have missed out on over 100 years of development in chemistry, chemical engineering, and agricultural science. Stony Creek Colors has applied advancement, innovations, and know-how in modern chemistry to develop and validate a proprietary, safe, high-yielding, and chemically benign extraction process for converting indigo crop biomass into high-value, high-consistency natural indigo dye. The company has further developed a network of small- and medium-sized farmers in the Northern Middle Tennessee area to successfully grow indigo as a transplant-crop using tobacco growing assets. Stony Creek Colors scaled this structure in 2016 to 26 acres of indigo production crop and 10,000 sqft of factory production.Phase I of this NIFA/USDA-funded SBIR project served to address challenges to scaling commercial indigo production including needs for 1) consistent and cost effective field establishment of natural indigo crops including replacement of transplanting with direct seeding, 2) scalable mechanized harvesting of indigo crops without damage to the leaves, 3) a modern and comprehensive agronomic management system, 4) improved scalable factory unit operations, and 5) blending strategies for indigo crops for product consistency across batches. Phase I results were generally successful, resulting in implementation of key technologies for the 2017 scale up to 180 acres of crops and a factory throughput of roughly 70,000 pounds of indigo plant biomass per day for at least 120 days of the season. Phase I advancements in crop establishment, harvesting, and transportation have allowed for sustainably managed Japanese indigo contract farm sizes to increase from an average 2.9 acres in 2016 to 20 acres in 2017, with new tropical indigo farms averaging over 6 acres per farmer and returning profitable crops to what were once high-value tobacco fields. Phase II efforts will serve to refine the technology outcomes from Phase I, and to refine the strategies and methods for their implementation.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
40%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
Research and development will focus paid to improved and consistent crop establishment, scalable mechanical harvesting and transport of biomass, logistic and agronomic management systems, finalized and efficient factory unit operations, and high-performing tropical indigo incorporation. Each of these represents an opportunity for significantly improving the efficiency and efficacy of the natural indigo supply chain and making it industrially competitive as a premium alternative to synthetic indigo dye.The Phase II goals are specific innovations that correct for inconsistencies in the raw material base by developing improved agronomic practices and methods to improve batch consistency. The outcome of this research will provide a foundation for Stony Creek Colors to not only meet future production targets but also to significantly improve its understanding of how indigo crop production systems can be improved and scaled. The work conducted under this proposal will serve as a basis for developing optimized systems for industrial production of indigo that can reduce the overall commercial crop production costs, risks, and variability for small farmersTechnical Objective 1: Crop EstablishmentStony Creek Colors has demonstrated the ability to leverage know-how and expertise existing within the network of tobacco farmers in the Northern Middle Tennessee are to successfully deploy and manage indigo as a specialty crop. However, the transplanting aspect of this method limits the potential scale of the crop to growers with access to greenhouses and transplant setters. In order to expand the potential reach of this crop, methods are being pursued for planting seed using methods more typical to non-tobacco farmers. In this Technical Objective, Stony Creek Colors will compare existing crop establishment techniques with more scalable direct seeding methods or higher density transplant methods, to include a range of seeding methods, dates, field conditions, and seed coatings and weed control treatments. The objective is to determine what circumstances and methods can result in efficient high-density stand establishment.Technical Objective 2: Advanced Mechanical Harvest and TransportTraditionally, indigo crops have been hand-harvested using low-cost labor. This is not an option for a U.S.-grown specialty crops, and it does not philosophically align with Stony Creek's goals. To mechanize the indigo harvest for industrial scale, methods were evaluated to carefully remove the leaves from the plants without causing significant damage, leaving the living stems intact. In this Technical Objective, the company will evaluate the mechanical harvest method identified through Phase I research and development with regard to scale up to commercially available self-powered combine-type harvesters. It is critical that a replicable and scalable mechanical harvest method is identified and fully investigated as a unit component of the operational model.Technical Objective 3: Logistics and Agronomic Management SystemsJapanese and tropical indigo are new specialty crops which have missed out on 100 years of agricultural advancements. To rapidly make this crop industrially viable and scalable to 20,000 acres of small- and medium-sized farms, crop data must be continually collected and assessed in near-realtime to inform decisions and enable predictive analysis in the farmers' fields and at the processing facility. Applying modern data technology to the indigo supply chain will generate realtime targets and performance indicators, refine equations to drive predictive analytics for plant and factory yields, and enable efficient logistics operations as fleets of harvesters and trailers bring crops from the fields to the factory with optimization for throughput and output.Technical Objective 4: Factory Unit OperationsBecause no legacy infrastructure exists for the manufacture of indigo dye from natural indigo crops, Stony Creek Colors has developed a proprietary safe and sustainable dye extraction process and has scaled it to industrial factory unit operations. During the scale-up of this process from laboratory to factory, new unit operations are identified as operational bottlenecks and are solved. After Phase I research and development and successful 2016 factory season, the bottleneck was moved from efficient settling tank separation to final dewatering of the product slurry. The objective of this research area is to evaluate and validate various industrial operations and equipment for providing the final product in a usable state, and optimizing the slurry entering that final solid-liquid separation.Technical Objective 5: Tropical Indigo Processing and Post-Production BlendingDuring the course of Phase I research, tropical indigo varieties were evaluated as potential season-extending, single-harvest crops, though the research conducted indicates the potential for this crop to play a more significant role requiring additional research. Not only were product purities expectedly higher than indigo, but leaf quality, plant yield, and batch yield were also higher. The data collected during the 2016 season is heavily weighted towards end-of-season activities and therefore does not provide an adequate baseline for predictive analysis and does not inform the 2017 crop makeup. This Technical Objective seeks to collect the necessary dataset for tropical indigo production to make it a potential alternative high yield crop.
Project Methods
Stony Creek Colors currently operates a bio-based dye production factory, and chemistry laboratory, and a small research farm, and contracts indigo crop production to small and medium farmers in Northern Middle Tennessee. The focus of the technical objectives presented in this project is to improve effiency and capability at all points along the process, and as such, much of the research will be carried out along side existing processes in the current facilities and farm. New process equipment will be rented and evaluated with representative raw materials in a factory setting. Seed and plant trials will be perfromed along side Stony Creek's standard plant breeding and optimization trials in production greenhouses and research plots. Laboratory analyses will be conducted by Stony Creek's research chemists as part of their daily routine.