STONY CREEK COLORS, INC. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.800000000000001

Description

Stony Creek Colors sells clean and safe natural dyes to the textile and fashion industries allowingits customers to offer environmentally conscious premium products. Through its flagship naturalindigo product the company has developed and proven a complete agricultural supply chain toreplace synthetic dyes with plant-based drop-in solutions.Through its flagship natural indigoproduct the company has developed and proven a complete agricultural supply chain to replacesynthetic dyes with plant-based drop-in solutions.This supply chain is currently based on themechanized harvest and immediate processing of fresh leaf biomass from nearby farms as thehighly perishable biomass degrades to an unusable state within hours of harvest.This limits thecompany's sourcing geography to local farms as well as the factory's operational window to thefour months of harvest season.Stony Creek has recently begun validating a method for stabilizingand drying the fresh biomass so that it can be stored and transported and this stabilized biomass hasbeen successfully converted to indigo dye using crude laboratory processes.This Phase I SBIR willfocus on understanding the optimal and boundary conditions for each step in the new dry-leafconversion process and developing and operating a pilot scale processing line to validate toincreased yield and purity assumptions.This technology would allow sourcing of new indigo cropsfrom previously unavailable regions with extended or year-round harvest seasons coupled withyear-round predictable and controllable factory operations resulting in substantially higher productcapacity and output along with stable year-round factory employment opportunities.