Bio-based Indigo Agricultural Supply Chain Development

Stony Creek Colors sells clean and safe natural dyes to the textile and fashion industries, allowing its customers to offer environmentally conscious premium products. Through its flagship natural indigo product, the company has developed and proven a complete agricultural supply chain to replace synthetic dyes with plant-based drop-in solutions. Innovations across the complete crop and processing value chain allow Stony Creek to sustainably produce plant-based dyes with full transparency and authenticity, meeting the technical performance and volume requirements of textile mills and fashion brands worldwide without compromising product integrity. A guaranteed take-off agreement with a leading global denim mill partner ensures the company's bio-based dyes are in demand, and the naturally dyed denim resulting from this effort is currently being used in premier brands. Stony Creek Colors has demonstrated the commercial viability of the natural indigo supply chain having significantly scaled its operations in 2016, and it is now identifying and executing upon efficiencies made evident in the plant genetics, agricultural operations, and chemical processing activities. Through this NIFA/USDA-funded research effort, Stony Creek Colors is working to optimize the agricultural and industrial natural indigo supply chain by identifying, establishing, and refining scalable and efficient methods of indigo crop production and factory extraction which will allow bio-based indigo the opportunity to compete more closely with its synthetically manufactured counterpart.Natural indigo was once a driver of the world economy, with plantations existing across the globe which grew, cultivated, harvested and processed indigo crops into blue indigo dye. This was usually done through a multi-step but industrially simple and environmentally low-impact process. Following the discovery of a synthetic pathway to indigo dye at the turn of the 20th century, this agricultural crop and its bio-based dye product were quickly supplanted by a commodity industrial chemical synthesized from coal tar and petroleum derivatives. The textile dyeing and finishing industry is now responsible for 17% of industrial water pollution worldwide, and after the turn of the 21st century, consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the impact of their personal choices allowing socially and environmentally sustainable products to take market share. Major fashion brands like Levi's & Nike are now making purchasing decisions based on the full environmental and life cycle impact of their products, with a commitment to reduce hazardous chemical use to zero by 2020. Natural indigo is an obvious entry into this new market opportunity, representing a known story that once defined the denim jeans market. The incorporation of natural indigo into an existing brand or line of clothing represents a low-cost differentiator with significant customer resonance allowing for higher margins for mills and brands. However, as an agricultural crop and specialty bio-based product, consistent, reliable, and sizeable sources for natural indigo dye no longer exist in the global marketplace. Natural indigo dye and its parent agricultural crop have missed out on over 100 years of development in chemistry, chemical engineering, and agricultural science. Stony Creek Colors has applied advancement, innovations, and know-how in modern chemistry to develop and validate a proprietary, safe, high-yielding, and chemically benign extraction process for converting indigo crop biomass into high-value, high-consistency natural indigo dye. The company has further developed a network of small- and medium-sized farmers in the Northern Middle Tennessee area to successfully grow indigo as a transplant-crop using tobacco growing assets. Stony Creek Colors scaled this structure in 2016 to 26 acres of indigo production crop and 10,000 sqft of factory production.Phase I of this NIFA/USDA-funded SBIR project ser