WGCIT Novihum: Making Soil Better
By Tim Linden I t’s a simple catch phrase but Novihum Technologies claims that its signature product—a soil enhancer— lives up to the company’s motto, “We make soil better.” In the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany invented a soil enhancer based on modified lignite, a combustible, sedimentary rock. Some of those researchers founded Novihum Technologies in 2012 to find a way to bring the revolutionary product to market. Current CEO Andre Moreira, who was with BASF Venture Capital for 13 years, joined Novihum in 2017 to guide the marketing effort. Over the past decade, the company has proven that they can make the technology scalable in an economically efficient way and are now taking it to market, with the United States in general being one of their major markets and California being a key target because of its concentration of specialty crops. In 2016, Moreira said a pilot plant was built in Dortmund, Germany, which can annually produce 1,000-1,400 tons of Novihum, which is the name of the product and the company. The CEO referred to this
quantity as only a “drop in the ocean” and noted that the company is in the process of expanding operations, which would include a manufacturing facility in the United States. Novihum joined the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology in 2018 and is using its Salinas space as its titular U.S. headquarters. Erin McAbee, the company’s technical sales manager, is the California contact for interested U.S. growers. She described Novihum the product as “granular humic.” She explained that many growers use compost on their land, which breaks down the soil and creates a stable organic matter. Novihum, she said, is already at that stage. The company’s website claims “it is chemically indistinguishable from natural stable humus found in the best soil with a guaranteed humic content (humines, humic acids and fulvic acids) of 60% or higher.” McAbee said Novihum has all the benefits of compost with none of the negatives, such as pathogens and micro-plastics. And she said a huge benefit is that it is 100% consistent with each handful being exactly the same. The various iterations of the core product—Novihum 25, Novihum Fine, Novihum Dispersa, Novihum Argil and Novihum Argil Extra—are designed for differents soil types and application methods but each contains the same base material. Moreira said growers have a healthy skepticism of these types of materials and rightly so, but he said Novihum understands that approach and meets it face on with data. Quoting a business axiom, he noted: “In God we trust, everyone else bring data.” He said many peer reviewed papers on the product have been published by university researchers and the company has many trials to back up its claim that the application of Novihum products will improve the soil and increase yields. But he is quick to note that every situation, crop and grower is different. McAbee said the data also shows that improving the soil with Novihum also improves water use efficiency and retention. In California, among the ground on which successful trials have been run are lettuce fields, grape vineyards and citrus orchards. They have also done work in the Midwest on field crops and have positive results on the soil enhancer’s use on many crops in Europe. Moreira said while the company is already open for full orders, which are shipped by container
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Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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