The World's first vegetal chitosan biostimulant from non-GMO and renewable source on an industrial scale

Project Information

KITOGREEN

Grant agreement ID: 875948

DOI

10.3030/875948

Project closed

EC signature date 29 July 2019

Start date 1 August 2019

End date 30 November 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

KITOZYME SA
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - KITOGREEN (The World's first vegetal chitosan biostimulant from non-GMO and renewable source on an industrial scale)

Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2019-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

At KitoZyme, we verified the feasibility of KitoGreen project to optimize our disruptive biostimulants manufacturing platform and release it into market. While we are carrying out an on-going Proof of Concept study, long term safety and efficacy of our current generation of KitoGreen products, a group of fungal-derived chitosan formulations acting as biostimulants for specific crops, we plan to: optimize these formulations, and improve our manufacturing capability and technology transfer. Thus, we assessed all the investment required to complete the project, for which we will pursue financing support of €1.71M from the EC scheme of Accelerator project. We have also evaluated the potential of KitoGreen to generate >€2.88M profit and new employment. Moreover, we have already received proofs of interest from our key stakeholders: consultancy companies, and manufacturers and distributors in the field of agronomy. Furthermore, we have already established a partnership to secure our European distribution channels with one the major agriculture input distributor.
Consequently, we finally decided to continue with KitoGreen project, motivated by the confirmation of the uniqueness and competitiveness of our innovation with this feasibility study.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY, including: production technology definition and transfer; KitoGreen´s specifications; analysis of validation procedures; detailed technical plan to increase TRL to 8; analysis of risks and design of a mitigation and contingency plan.
COMMERCIAL FEASIBILITY, including: market analysis; end-user´s segmentation; main competitors; commercial strategy; SoA and FtO analysis; business model; commercialization and dissemination plan, including IPR strategy.
FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY, including: in-depth cost analysis to evaluate our capacity to take the innovation; business projections for the first five years after Accelerator project execution in a conservative sales scenario.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

KitoGreen will be the first biomanufacturing platform able to yield low-molecular weight chitosan from fungal biomass by-products, improving the benefits of conventional biostimulants (stimulation of plant growth, enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance, increasing resistance to pathogenic agents, and better post-harvest protection) and accelerating biostimulants development process in terms of cost and time-to-market. It will allow us to grow reaching >€7M revenue and +6 new employees after the 5th year of Accelerator project execution.

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