SICIT Group, the Italian maker of protein-based biostimulants, formally dedicated its new production plant in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico, on 10 November. The 550,000-square-foot facility is the company's first production site outside Italy and its fourth plant overall, chief executive Sergi Barrull said.
SICIT recovers residues from the tanning industry that would otherwise be thrown away. In Leon it buys "wet blue" trimmings and shavings, leather scraps named for the colour left by the chromium salts used to tan them. The material is shredded, mixed with water and lime and heated to separate the chromium salts from protein hydrolysates, which are then formulated into amino-acid biostimulants sold under the PepIQ name. Other outputs include gypsum retarders and feedstock for biofuel production.
The plant represents an investment of more than $44 million and runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, in three eight-hour shifts. Barrull said the region was chosen partly for its long history of leather goods: SICIT has collected wet blue in Europe and Brazil for years, and Mexico is a new source of raw material.
PepIQ peptides reach farmers through biostimulant brands sold with crop protection companies including BASF, Bayer and Syngenta, and SICIT says those brands are used on about 60 to 70 million crop acres a year. Chief commercial officer Franz Prieschl said demand from Latin America has grown in recent years and the new plant puts SICIT closer to those markets. He said it also opens a route into the United States, which he described as a crowded biostimulant segment "with some trust issues", where a company needs a solid product and plan.
The company is also growing moringa, a fast-growing, drought-tolerant tree native to South Asia, on large areas in Mexico. Barrull said moringa will supply a new, still unnamed biostimulant meant to help row crops recover from climate-induced stress, to be marketed to US corn growers for the 2027 season with a US partner. The launch and the partnership are due to be announced at the Biocontrol Summit in Sacramento, California, in early December.
The report is by Eric Sfiligoj.
Photo: Challiyan at Malayalam Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: AgriBusiness Global
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