Sailing with the Wind at his Back
Sean Smith, CEO of Eden Research is clearly at his road to Damascus moment. With commercial partners in place across six continents and product registration activities in around 30 countries, regulatory clearance is expected before year-end from the EPA, which could measurably change the biopesticide producer’s fortunes. The move into the US will more than double Eden’s total addressable market, and ultimately represents a significant revenue opportunity amid strong regulatory headwinds facing the pesticide industry.
Eden’s focus is on sustainably protecting high-value crops such as grapes and tomatoes, improving crop yields and of course, marketability.
“These are very exciting times,” says Smith. “We’ve been pursuing EPA approval for more than four years. Our long-term shareholders have most certainly have had a need for abundant patience.”
The pace of regulatory action, like in pharma, can be frustrating. To submit a regulatory application in many countries, including across the EU, Smith explains that “you need two growing cycles or two seasons to prove to regulators that the product works. But, sometimes, you go into the field and don’t get clear results due to unsuitable conditions. Then, you have to repeat the trials until you have a big enough pool of reliable results so the regulators will let you pass on to the next stage. One of the things that happens far more often than we like, which is not unique to us, but what the industry faces, is you go into the field and growing conditions don’t support a trial. That means after a growing season you come away without usable data. So, as you can see, the years can add up quite quickly despite your best efforts.”
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A self-proclaimed geek from suburban Kansas City, Smith literally has science running in his veins. With an undergraduate degree in microbiology, he gave up his interest in pursuing a PhD in order to focus on the commercial side of the chemical industry. Arguably, he says he entered the field at one of the most uninspiring times in history but, times have changed. Instead of working with molecules developed in a lab, he’s now working with molecules designed by mother nature herself to ward of predators and disease on a wide range of important food crops.
“It’s a great moment to be in biopesticides,” he continues. “Consumer sentiment and regulatory policy do not favor conventional synthetic pesticides anymore. There’s a strong movement away from them for numerous reasons including increased scrutiny and regulatory pressures.”
Eden’s products are based upon natural plant chemistry but “deliver performance in terms of efficacy and cost in use that is on par with conventional products,” he explains. “Growers don’t expect to pay a sort of tax just in terms of performance or in terms of price in the field. In terms of other biocontrol products, typically we outperform them and quite often by a comfortable margin. There are a lot of reasons for that but it comes back to how our products are formulated. We are taking the output of mother nature and repackaging it in a way that is more useable, reliable and more sustainable.”
Eden is traded on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) market for small and/or growth companies. The company develops and supplies innovative biopesticide products and natural microencapsulation technologies to the global crop protection, animal health and consumer products industries. It’s biggest single application for its first product, Mevalone® (a bio-fungicide), was initially to treat one particular fungal pathogen on grapes (though the uses for Mevalone® are expanding as quickly as Eden can manage to complete the regulatory requirements to enlarge its uses). It’s second product, CedrozTM fights plant parasitic nematodes in a safer and more sustainable way.
““Climate change,” says Smith “is not our friend. ”
Climate change is one of their biggest challenges.
“Climate change,” says Smith “is not our friend. In our industry, A drier and hotter climate translates into suboptimal growing conditions. For certain targets, that development doesn’t bode well for our business. However, it should be noted that those conditions can actually favor certain diseases and pests. So, from a portfolio perspective, its about making sure that we spread those risks across a whole range of different disease, pest or crop targets, not to mention geography. The UK, for instance, is—who would have thought—producing a significant number of quality wines now. That’s not something you would have expected 30 or 40 years ago. They’re increasing the number of farmable hectares in response. That’s partially due to climate change, so in some ways, climate change can open up new opportunities even whilst creating challenges for growers.”
The challenge of climate change and food scarcity is uppermost these days. As Smith sees it, agriculture is crucial to the economy and we need to do all we can to support farmers and the food supply chain: “we can’t solve one problem, and create another. That’s why what we do, really is quite important.”