Quebec startup ExclusiVert of Quebec is making a mobile starch extraction unit that travels from farm to farm to process cull potatoes into starch for bioplastics, paper manufacturing and other industrial products.
According to Dr. Said Elkoun, scientific director at ExclusiVert and professor at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada produces about six million tonnes of potatoes annually, and roughly 10 per cent never reach the fresh market because the potatoes are undersized, misshapen or otherwise unsuitable for sale.
In Quebec alone he estimates between 50,000 and 65,000 tonnes of potatoes fall into that category each year.
“We saw those figures and thought there was something we could do,” Elkoun said, referring to ExclusiVert co-founders Zedou Mouliom Atangana and Juliette Clairence Mango.
“Our idea was to move the process to the farmers instead of moving the potatoes to the factory.”
They came up with the idea based on work in Cameroon, Africa, to extract starch from cassava.
