Opportunity for

• Australian investors, waste management and manufacturing companies with access to waste banana feed stock and an interest and capability to partner in establishing a production plant and sales team in Australia.
• Australian banana growers and government agencies interest also welcome.
  ^This opportunity is only for professional and sophisticated investors.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge

Bananas are the second most eaten fruit globally with 120m tons being produced annually. The problem is that they are also the most discarded; with billions thrown away in consumer countries each year. In addition to consumer waste, banana growers are forced to discard around 20%-30% of their crop deemed “unfit for sale”. Farmers do not get paid for this waste and consequently, this can significantly affect profits.

Annually, Australia grows 350,000 tons of bananas, with 95% of bananas grown in Queensland. Reports estimated that around 500T of bananas are rejected and disposed of on a daily basis - resulting in an estimated 75000T of banana waste each year ending up in landfill. This creates an environmental problem too by emitting 900,000T of CO2 equiv. as it rots and it also represents AUD millions in wasted commercial opportunity.

We estimated that there is a AUD 180m per annum market for our products in the supplementation of Australian Distilling & Yeast production. IP is also being developed for further markets such as food, protein, and chemical production.

Current opportunity

We seek to establish Joint venture partnerships with Australian investors, banana growers and local authorities to set up production plants and to sell our products. In return for building and operating plants, partners will be licenced the commercial rights to sell our products into the Australian market.

LyteGro’s production process is simple to perform, low-cost, modular, and uses standard food processing equipment. Production has been scaled up to the large pilot level with full production SOPs and QC documentation generated. Each factory which will utilise 700T of waste banana feedstock per annum to make around 200,000L of product – equating to AUD 40m of distilling revenues.

We have generated significant commercial traction for all of our first products. We have Sigma Aldrich as a licensee for the global R&D market and with first sales expected in Q1 of 2024.

Our distilling product has been successfully trialled by 10 UK distillers and we are expecting to set up another 10-20 trials in 2024 with distillers including Pernod Ricard and Diageo.

We have had early discussions on the bioenergy side with major bioenergy companies and are setting up evaluations with 3 of the top 4 global yeast producers; AB Mauri, LeSaffre and Lallemand.

*To find out more about this opportunity go to "Enquire now"

Opportunity background

Our products act like "steroids for microbes" enabling end users to grow bacteria, yeast and fungi faster, grow more of them, and to grow them cheaper. No other microbial growth enhancer is as potent or addresses such a broad range of species or applications as our technology or products. All of our products are simple to apply - being that they are either supplements added to existing processes or are a pre-treatment for the microbes driving the production process.

Use of our products can:

• Halve process time
• Significantly increase yield and biomass generation
• Enable the use of cheaper simpler growth media
• Reduce process feedstock, water and energy footprints

For example, Propagreater, our distilling product is a simple pre-treatment for yeast which can halve the time it takes to perform an alcohol fermentation whilst also giving 10-20% extra yield.

Our anaerobic digestion supplement (at just 0.5% v/v level) enables either the same yield of methane in half the time or an increase of 60% methane over a usual run time.

Through the use of our products and improved yields end-users are able to significantly expand their output without incurring significant CAPEX on new equipment or facilities

Potential other applications

Because of the broad range of microbial species that BacLyte effects it can be used across multiple industries. Consequently, there are huge opportunities for expanding the use of our products into new high-value markets.

We are currently patenting BacLyte's use in doubling biomass/yield in yeast production and in enhancing yields in the manufacture of proteins (e.g. enzymes) and vaccines.

We have also worked with brewers in the UK to demonstrate that we can significantly reduce fermentation times but we have yet to focus on this industry because of the huge volumes that they would require.

Further research is planned to investigate BacLyte’s impact in reducing proving time in the baking industry as well as its wide application in microbial diagnostics. Further application in the manufacture of specialist chemicals, such as surfactants and amino acids, is also set to start in 2024. There are also multiple opportunities in the agricultural sector which we would like to explore - so finding potential research partners in this sector would be beneficial.