A company that just five years ago started as an idea in
the minds of two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students on Monday opened the
doors to its new manufacturing plant that uses mushrooms to make environmentally
sound packaging material.Choose from our large selection of Cable Ties.
Ecovative Design already employs 45 full-time and 15 part-time workers, and is poised to keep growing, said company co-founder and CEO Eben Bayer. Its new manufacturing plant off Cohoes Avenue will allow the company to produce 10 times more of its award-winning product, which is being used by companies like Dell and Puma, and also has backing from one of the nation's largest makers of traditional packaging.
The new 25,000-square-foot factory is "the blueprint, the footprint of facilities that we are going to build around the United states, and around New York State" under a licensing agreement with Fortune 500 company Sealed Air, said Bayer, a 2007 RPI graduate who cofounded the company with fellow 2007 graduate Gavin McIntyre.This page contains information about tooling.
The first plant by Sealed Air to use licensed Ecovative technology will be someplace in the Southwest, Bayer said, declining to elaborate.
Called EcoCradle, the product starts as a cake batter-like mix of agricultural wastes like corn stalks and mushroom fungus.
The mix is poured into molds, where the fungus consumes the plant wastes to gradually take on a solid, spongy form. It is air dried and later baked, using green hydroelectric power from the Green Island Power Authority.
Unlike traditional foams and plastics, this material contains no petrochemicals. It breaks down naturally, and is so safe that it can be chopped up and spread over gardens as a compost.
Ecovative's new plant will replace the company's 9,000-square-foot operation in another building in the industrial park, which Bayer said will now be converted into a research and development facility for other potential uses for the mushroom-based product.
"We are looking at it as a replacement for composite building materials, particle board ... cabinetry and furniture,Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. and even a new shoe," said Bayer, whose company had just 20 workers about a year ago.
Part of what has helped Ecovative grow has been a blend of support from the government and private sector to nurture an innovation that sprang up from one of the Capital Region's premier academic institutions.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority invested more than $1 million into the company, which also received $250,000 from the state Empire State Development Environmental Investment Program.
"You hear a lot of voices in Washington, saying government should not be involved in this stuff, that we should cut, cut, cut," said Francis Murray, president and CEO of NYSERDA. "We have never looked at this sort of investment as a partisan political issue. This is a formula for success, a partnership."
ESD President and CEO Kenneth Adams said the state "doesn't place bets on random companies." He said Ecovative has already exceeded its requirements for adding jobs since its EDS funding was granted in December 2011.
Assemblyman Paul D. Tonko said government support is "an investment in a more promising future .Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services...An airpurifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. in an ideas economy, a clean energy economy, where we find ourselves in a global race with other nations that are equally involved. We won't cut our way there."
Ecovative Design already employs 45 full-time and 15 part-time workers, and is poised to keep growing, said company co-founder and CEO Eben Bayer. Its new manufacturing plant off Cohoes Avenue will allow the company to produce 10 times more of its award-winning product, which is being used by companies like Dell and Puma, and also has backing from one of the nation's largest makers of traditional packaging.
The new 25,000-square-foot factory is "the blueprint, the footprint of facilities that we are going to build around the United states, and around New York State" under a licensing agreement with Fortune 500 company Sealed Air, said Bayer, a 2007 RPI graduate who cofounded the company with fellow 2007 graduate Gavin McIntyre.This page contains information about tooling.
The first plant by Sealed Air to use licensed Ecovative technology will be someplace in the Southwest, Bayer said, declining to elaborate.
Called EcoCradle, the product starts as a cake batter-like mix of agricultural wastes like corn stalks and mushroom fungus.
The mix is poured into molds, where the fungus consumes the plant wastes to gradually take on a solid, spongy form. It is air dried and later baked, using green hydroelectric power from the Green Island Power Authority.
Unlike traditional foams and plastics, this material contains no petrochemicals. It breaks down naturally, and is so safe that it can be chopped up and spread over gardens as a compost.
Ecovative's new plant will replace the company's 9,000-square-foot operation in another building in the industrial park, which Bayer said will now be converted into a research and development facility for other potential uses for the mushroom-based product.
"We are looking at it as a replacement for composite building materials, particle board ... cabinetry and furniture,Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. and even a new shoe," said Bayer, whose company had just 20 workers about a year ago.
Part of what has helped Ecovative grow has been a blend of support from the government and private sector to nurture an innovation that sprang up from one of the Capital Region's premier academic institutions.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority invested more than $1 million into the company, which also received $250,000 from the state Empire State Development Environmental Investment Program.
"You hear a lot of voices in Washington, saying government should not be involved in this stuff, that we should cut, cut, cut," said Francis Murray, president and CEO of NYSERDA. "We have never looked at this sort of investment as a partisan political issue. This is a formula for success, a partnership."
ESD President and CEO Kenneth Adams said the state "doesn't place bets on random companies." He said Ecovative has already exceeded its requirements for adding jobs since its EDS funding was granted in December 2011.
Assemblyman Paul D. Tonko said government support is "an investment in a more promising future .Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services...An airpurifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. in an ideas economy, a clean energy economy, where we find ourselves in a global race with other nations that are equally involved. We won't cut our way there."
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