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EarthRenew's core technologies were developed in 1997 by Christianne Carin, founder, primary inventor and Chief Executive Officer, while working as a management consultant providing corporate finance services to rural based businesses. She was also managing livestock manure disposal on her own farm in British Columbia, Canada. After having conducted an extensive study of the cattle feedlot industry, she found that manure storage disposal costs were the dominant risk to the industry. These costs result from problems with contamination, pathogens and weed
seeds, regulations restricting manure application to prevent nutrient overloading and transportation and application inefficiencies caused by the weight of the manure. Christianne's understanding of these issues led her to seek a practical, safe and economic solution to manure disposal. She conceived the idea of cooking raw manure before decomposition at very high temperatures (up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit) to destroy weed seed viability and other contaminants and forming it into a hard, concentrated, dry granule suitable for common fertilizer application techniques.
Product and Technology Development
After two years of research and development, Ms. Carin formed EarthRenew in December 1999, rolling in the technologies developed to date. During this research phase, EarthRenew conducted internal and third party testing to confirm that the high temperature process did not affect the organic matter and nutrient inputs, but had many benefits including the non-viability of pathogens, chemicals and weed seeds. Our research and our product trials also confirmed that a variety of input green wastes can be used as raw material to make concentrated Organic Matter Fertilizer™ products and that the products can be made into different forms including granules, prills or meal and can be used on different crops with good responses. This is due to the fact that the high temperature process converts these green wastes, changing their basic characteristics into stable products and concentrates the organic matter
In May 2000, Dr. Al Fedkenheuer joined EarthRenew after having conducted due diligence on behalf of TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. relating to the assessment of greenhouse gas emission credits. Dr. Fedkenheuer, a soil, forestry and agricultural scientist with over 25 years of industry experience, assisted in the further development of our technologies and patents. Dr. Fedkenheuer is currently our President and Chief Operating Officer.
In early 2001, the price of natural gas increased, significantly impacting the economics of energy-intensive manufacturing and dehydration industries including our proposed organic waste conversion process. In searching for a solution to this problem, EarthRenew made a second significant innovation: remove the gas burner out of the cooking system and instead use the direct exhaust from a gas turbine as a high heat source. During this period we conceived of the idea of licensing this "dual use" to other energy-intensive industries.
In 2003, we commenced our intellectual property protection program by utilizing one of the top US patent firms to assess our technology for patentability, freedom to operate and risk of infringement, confirming our ability to continue with development of our technologies. We filed our initial six patents in the US July 2004 to set our global priority date.
A senior partner in the patent firm working on our patent program, Gene Dillahunty, also a chemical engineer, joined us in September 2004 and has continued to develop our comprehensive global IP portfolio since that date, among other responsibilities. We set up our US headquarters at Half Moon Bay (near San Francisco), California in 2004. Mr. Dillahunty is now Executive Vice President of EarthRenew.
People Strategy and Corporate Development
We continued with the development, testing and commencement of our patented processes, equipment and products through 2005. Further patents were filed in 2006, 2007 and 2008 with the initiation of global patent filings commencing in 2007.
After completing a financing in March 2006, we began commercialization of our technologies. Our then modest group of employees (initially four) began the design and development of our first WasteRenew™ Facility. By mid-November 2006 we initiated the installation of this WasteRenew™ Facility at a Host with 25,000 head cattle feedlot near Calgary, Alberta. We demonstrated that our concepts worked as designed; the turbine can be controlled for its exhaust to be the sole heat source, and produced and sold our products. We concurrently trained operators, refined controls, developed automation and operational procedures, commenced our safety and training programs, adjusted to seasonal impacts on our production and ramped up production. Further rounds of financing was completed in 2007.
We presently have over 40 regular full time employees and are actively pursuing our rollout of WasteRenew™ Facilities in three regions. We opened a second California office in Fresno/Clovis in May 2008. We continue to develop Hosting relationships, strategic alliances and marketing in these regions.
By April 1, 2008, we ended the commissioning period and commenced commercial operations of our Alberta facility as a commercial entity. This WasteRenew™ Facility is currently operational and producing proprietary products for sale, mainly into regional markets of agriculture, retail and direct reclamation and remediation. Organic Matter Fertilizer™ products have been used in a variety of third party research greenhouse and field trials across North America .