2007 Minnesota Biosciences

Oil Substitutes

Given Minnesota’s entrenched investments in corn-based ethanol, as well as its impressive strides in other bioenergy markets like wind, biomass, and biodeisel, Destination 2025’s initial phase (with an end-deliverable set for March 2009) is focused on renewable energy.

In 2006, Minnesota ended the year with more than 10,000 people employed in the ethanol marketplace, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA). By 2008, the MDA predicts that that number will jump to nearly 18,500 employees.

“Everyone knows that corn ethanol is the first entry into the market,” Wahlstrom says. “But in 20 years, corn ethanol fuels probably won’t be the biggest player. It will be biomass and the markets that trickle down.”

As Wahlstrom explains, in order to confront and compete with the decades-old business model for oil, you have to generate products that replace what’s marketed down the line in traditional petroleum distillation, from high-grade gasoline at the top, to the plastics derived from the chemicals at the bottom.

Start-ups like Minnetonka-based NatureWorks is addressing this by producing renewable polymers from sources like corn to make everything from packaging and consumer goods to fibers for apparel and furnishings.

“You can’t replace oil until you fill all aspects of that distiller,” says Wahlstrom.

Start-up Support

The Biobusiness Network, established by the BioBusiness Alliance as a resource for start-ups, is one constituency that stands to benefit from Destination 2025’s benchmarks. While last year’s assessments confirmed such strengths as Minnesota’s strong work force and well-funded and innovative academic and private sectors, a low success rate among start-ups was identified as a weakness. As of June 2007, the network was keeping tabs on 38 biobusiness companies in various stages of fruition.

One company, Agricultural Solutions, Inc. (ASI), is developing products related to the early detection and treatment of mastitis in diary cattle—a problem that costs dairy farmers billions of dollars in lost productivity each year.

ASI’s promising market opportunity and the process of applying medical-device systems to agriculture is the sort of cross-germination of biotechnologies that the BioBusiness Alliance seeks to promote.

“They’ve already opened the doors to a number of places for us,” says Jim Grabek, a board member of ASI who says close to a million dollars of seed money had been raised from early investors as of June 2007. “After Dale explained what they’re trying to do, we saw a common vision of keeping Minnesota in a leadership position in these markets,” Grabek says.