Kultevat looks to fill gap in domestic NR source with TKS dandelion

ST. LOUIS—The search for alternative sources of natural rubber is not a new endeavor.

But the need for a domestic source in the U.S. has come to the forefront since the pandemic's resulting logistical nightmares and has been exacerbated by today's environmental and geopolitical climate concerns.

Rubber is "indispensable," said Dan Swiger, president and CEO of the St. Louis-based alternate rubber producer Kultevat.

"Rubber is in our daily use in needs," he told Rubber News. "Just like petroleum is today, we can't do without it because we've been raised on petroleum our whole lives."

And just as ethanol finds itself in the petroleum space, he said, Kultevat finds itself in the NR space with Taraxacum kok-saghyz, or TKS—commonly known as the Russian dandelion.

The need for an alternative NR market has grown in urgency over the years, according to Swiger, who noted this is because of the setbacks companies face in acquiring raw materials due to supply chain bottlenecks, the threat of tree disease in Southeast Asia and a growing sense of environmental responsibility among manufacturers.

"With the pandemic, there has been a big recognition that it's more important now than ever to have a domestic source of natural rubber," he said.

"When you're solely dependent on an import from one area of any one country, you understand that when something like the pandemic happens, all things come to a halt."

Since hevea is mono-clonal, he said leaf blight is a serious threat to the global economy in the event it hits Southeast Asia, where more than 90 percent of natural rubber is sourced.

And as companies move more toward being environmentally sustainable, Swiger noted that extracting natural rubber from TKS comes without the risk of deforestation.

While geopolitical conflict isn't something a company wants to promote when conveying the importance of a material, Swiger acknowledged rubber also is critical in times of war.

"(Rubber)'s a strategic material, and it's critical to national security," Swiger said, pointing to the U.S. National Critical Materials Act, first established in the 1980s, and the European Union's recent addition of rubber to its list of critical raw materials in 2017.

"The United States has a critical materials list, and natural rubber is on that critical materials list, and the reason natural rubber is on that list (is because) it's like cobalt, nickel, titanium—it's on there because you cannot go to war without it," he said. "Not just tires for the war machine, but tracks, V-belts, grommets, shoes, apparel."

But NR being a matter of national security extends further than its use in defense, Swiger said, as it stretches across the health care, industrial and consumer sectors.

Ensuring a supply of such an important material is Kultevat's top priority.

"This has been one of our missions from day one, to make sure that we're always moving forward with having a guaranteed supply of natural rubber here in the United States," Swiger said.

To fill the supply gap of domestic NR, tire makers like Bridgestone, Nokian and others have invested time and research into alternatives like guayule, a desert shrub that yields latex properties similar to that of hevea trees. And Edison Agrosciences Inc., with support from the U.S. Department of Defense, has been researching genetic modification to increase the small amounts of NR found in sunflower leaves.

But nobody has what Kultevat has, Swiger said, noting the company has "eight years of improvements that really put us, probably, ahead of anybody else right now."

Even as other companies enter research and development stages with TKS, Kultevat has been in the alternate NR game since 2008. And Swiger's experience in biomaterials goes back even further than this as the founder of Yulex Corp.

"I've been in this alternative rubber space since 1995," Swiger said. "We've had an experience with guayule, and we've looked at sunflower over the years, and we've always known about TKS.

"There's a reason why (Kultevat) made the biggest choice and the best choice of going with TKS."

TKS is a premium, high-performance, 100-percent natural-based product, Swiger said.

"Hevea's different, guayule's different, sunflower's different, and we're different when it comes to physical properties," he continued. "TKS (as an alternative) is the closest to hevea rubber that you're ever going to get."

Swiger said TKS can be used as an additive, like an impact bio-modifier, or a complete replacement, depending on customer needs. And it comes with numerous benefits.

Besides coming without the risk of deforestation, he said TKS can act as an additional revenue stream for farmers looking for a rotational crop that is good for soil health.

And growers of crops "need not worry" when it comes to the risk of the dandelion becoming a noxious weed.

"The common dandelion Taraxacum officinale won't accept pollen from TKS dandelions, so genes cannot be transferred by cross-pollination," he said.

For Kultevat, the benefits go even further, as the Russian dandelion also can be processed into inulin.

"Inulin is a soluble fiber that has multiple uses," Swiger said. "It can be used in foods as a fat replacement, it can be used as a soluble dietary fiber, it can be used as a therapeutic drug delivery system as well.

"And it's also used in human and animal wellness products, like cleanses or prebiotics or probiotics."

He said the inulin helps offset the cost of processing the NR by giving the company an additional revenue stream.

In terms of TKS' scalability in the rubber industry, Swiger said he couldn't share the exact capacity at which TKS is grown or can be grown, but he could put it in a gridiron perspective.

"We're on the one-yard line, ready to put it over the goal line," he said, meaning the material has the potential to be used widely throughout the industry as the business and production grows.

"It's not that it's not being used (widely) because there's not a need, it's not being used because we have not been able to provide enough to scale at that level," he said.

Yet.

But Kultevat is on its way, and with the right partnerships in place, it only gets closer.

Over the last several years, he said, "we've just really had our heads down working away" to fine-tune its entire patent-protected process and build its reputation among potential customers and partners.

"We've made a lot of improvements in our plant science (and) our extraction process when it comes to quality and quantity of natural rubber," he said, describing Kultevat as a closed-loop company. "And we actually have a proven network of farmers here in North America that have shown that they would like to have another rotational crop that they can actually make money from.

"It's kind of like if you build it, they will come," he said. "Well, we've been building it, and guess what, they are coming."

Kultevat has partners in multiple sectors of the rubber industry, including tire, footwear and apparel. Due to nondisclosure agreements, however, he could not confirm specific companies with which Kultevat works.

"We've already demonstrated the demand for the rubber through strategic partnering with some of those tire companies, apparel companies and footwear companies," Swiger said.

"Now we're at a point that these partnerships will start to bear fruit, meaning we'll be able to continue to grow as a company and expand and commercialize on the demonstration."

The industry is beginning to see the "need and want" of TKS, he said. "And (manufacturers are) willing to make the sacrifice and switch over, but it's just like anything else, it takes time."

TKS can be grown in 42 states and is currently growing in seven, meaning there's "a ton of room for growth" as Kultevat expands to other states.

"We're building it, we've been building it, and it will become … a very instrumental part in this rubber segment, because there is a need and a want," he said of growing TKS' position in the NR market.

"We, as the United States, are 100-percent dependent on a foreign import," Swiger said. "And it is (Kultevat's) goal to really make sure that we have a domestic source of natural rubber, regardless of what application you might be purchasing or introducing the product to, and to make sure that there is a secure pipeline of natural rubber—and I'll take it one step further—with superior high-performance properties."