The Algae Tech that Promises to Drive Petro Pigments off the Market

They went on to win several business pitch competitions and including first place in the University of Denver Jake Jabs Business Pitch Competition ($10,000), second place at Colorado State University Blue Ocean Challenge ($10,000) and first place at the University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Energy Cleantech Challenge ($50,000). They also did a Kickstarter campaign and raised $61,000. This idea paved the way to start a business, but they had larger aspirations than this niche product. 

In 2016, Living Ink was awarded a National Science Foundation Phase I Small Business Grant worth $225,000. This funding was used to hire their first employee and pick up the speed of R&D and customer discovery. The project was focused on producing different coloured algae and turning the algae into sustainable ink and pigment products. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uAAegPkCKo )

Living Ink pivoted away from a “growing, living ink” from Kickstarter and focused on replacing petroleum components within ink and pigments. In 2017, Living Ink was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant Phase II Small Business Grant after successfully fulfilling their objectives of Phase I. 

In 2019, they were focused on developing colours from algae. However, after many conversations with ink and pigment experts it was decided to shift the company’s focus to producing a black pigment from waste algae product created during large-scale algae production. This black pigment acts as a replacement for petroleum-based black pigment. Black makes up the majority of pigments and inks in the printing and pigment market. The goal mid to longer term goal is to generate revenue from the black pigmented products and then finalise R&D related to coloured algae products. 

In 2018–19, the State of Colorado awarded Living Ink a $250,000 grant to assist in building a pilot plant to generate products for market validation. This grant proved integral for their capital costs at their production warehouse near Denver, Colorado. 

Living Ink raised ~$2 million of seed funding in January 2021. This included $500,000 from a non-dilutive NSF Phase IIB grant programme. The seed round helped scale up the pilot plant and deliver products to brands such as Patagonia and Nike. The company now is sending products all over the world, has entered the global supply chain of ink and pigments, and works with designers through purchasers. It is now time to grow the story and product. 

In 2023, Living Ink continued to develop the most sustainable and cost-effective solution for scaling carbon black alternatives. Moving forward, the company focuses on using biomass derived from waste-streams that include a tipping fee (or free). This dramatically reduces the COGS of the Living Ink products, while generating a second stream of revenue. 

So, from building early stage biotechnology companies including Venture-backed Valcent Products Inc, Global Green Solutions and Solix Biosystems where he developed experience in product development, technology deployment and business development, Scott Fulbright now drives strategic planning, fundraising and partnership at Living Ink. This includes successful partnerships with companies such as Nike, Patagonia and New Balance. 

Stevan’s activities include R&D strategy, scale up deployment, life-cycle analysis and patent portfolio development.

How did you go about researching? What were the hurdles and when was the eureka moment? 
Scott Fulbright: UV lightfastness was the biggest hurdle in bio-based colorants. For example, it can't fade under sunlight. The colour also has to have high colour density. In both cases, we patented technologies related to accomplishing these hurdles. Starting from scratch is fun and challenging. One of the biggest move was bringing on an industry consultant who helped develop experiments, identify needed approach and equipment to start testing. 

Who was the first to give you that full-fledged support to go ahead with it and then test use the product?
Scott Fulbright: A printer in Colorado called Ecoenclose was our first partner and true ally. They believe deeply in sustainability and are willing to take risks to accomplish their goals. They were instrumental in developing our products and getting Algae Ink on real products that were shipped around the world. 

How did the financing come about?
Stevan Albers: Early on we won business pitch competitions around the State of Colorado that helped us bootstart. Next, we were awarded grants from The National Science Foundation and Department of Energy to support tech development. We raised a pre-seed round of funding from private investors in 2021. 

How does LI ensure that it’s black is carbon negative?
Scott Fulbright: We have done a full ISO certified LCA with Colorado State University. We work closely with this team to continue to develop and tweak the LCA. 

How different is the colour from the pigment?
Stevan Albers: In almost all cases we are a 1:1 match compared to traditional carbon black pigments. Thus, it's a very dense colour.

How do you go about the production of Algae Black pigment?
Scott Fulbright: Living Ink partners with farms to divert agricultural waste away from landfills and repurpose it into suitable black pigment. For our flagship Algae Black pigments we work with growers like California-based algae farm, Earthrise Nutritionals, to collect algae biomass leftover from their natural nutritional supplement production. The algae biomass then undergoes a proprietary thermal treatment process and is converted into carbon-negative, bio-based black colourant.

A whole bunch of startups are coming up with innovative ways to combat fashion’s pollution issues. A company like Living Ink turns to algae. Do you think this could at some later stage — the volumes market —  result in mining earth’s aquatic / marine resources too much, leaching gradually some more of its natural resources? What is the guarantee?
Scott Fulbright: This is a great question. At Living Inc. we have developed a technology that can use a variety of different materials. We can use a variety of different biomass sources that come from both the ocean, domestic algae growth, and even other sources of microbial biomass ways from places such as breweries. Thus, we are not concerned about starting biomass. There is plenty that can be used around the world, which is very exciting for us.

A host of global brands are already using LI’s pigments and colours. How easy or difficult was it to get their buy in? What would be your advice to a startup on how best to draw their attention?
Scott Fulbright: I don't think anything in the innovation space is that easy. Innovation can be challenging at the technology level and implementation in the real world is also a challenge. Patagonia was our first big brand to buy into using our product. That was instrumental in helping us get plugged into a global supply chain and learning how to deliver on each continent. Every project that we launch, we learn a lot. After a lot of learning, it's becoming easier and easier and we become more credible to deliver large quantities to very well-known brands. It's one thing to make the product work in the marketplace; it's another challenge to be able to scale at the global level for these different brands in brand factory partners. 

My advice to other startups is to find the best suited customer and find someone within that customer that would be interested in the innovation that you're working on. We spent a lot of time talking to customers or people that were interested, but cannot use our product or did not know how to use our product. We start to see traction once we find the right person who knows how to make it all work.

Tell us your growth story in approximate numbers. What is the target for the next two years?
Scott Fulbright: Not ready to be public, but we have printed 10's of millions of units (apparel and packaging). 

Do you plan to stick to black or are you researching to arrive at a diverse colour palette?
Stevan Albers: We started the business developing colours and identified an issue with byproduct and waste biomass in the market places that we are working in. We develop technology around such waste streams, and that's how we develop the black technologies. We are planning on developing colours and have grants submitted to get funding. The goal in the end is cyan yellow, magenta black which will allow us to mix these and make a variety of different colours. One challenge that will be working on developing UV lightfastness colour.

How does the entire process of coming out with the black colour work? What does the supply chain look like?
Scott Fulbright: We work with groups that produce biomass by-product or waste-streams. They send that material to use and process it into a black pigment using our patent technology. We then can do different downstream treatments of that pigment to produce a variety of different grades of pigment. Or we can blend the pigment into ink formulations (vegetable oils or water-based inks) for finished ink products. We then ship the pigment or ink to our customers around the world. Future looking, we plan to co-locate near biomass sources to reduce the cost and carbon of shipping. This includes on each continent. 

What are the certifications that you have gone for?
Stevan Albers:  ZDHC is the main certification we currently have. We have a long list of others that will be or will be pursuing in the coming future. 

Suppose I am a small manufacturer but would like to use your pigment instead of the regular black. How accessible are you both in terms of cost and geographies?
Scott Fulbright: We work with small groups as well as medium and large. There are cons and pros to all regions and sizes of companies. We are happy to send samples and ship production orders. We are inundated with sample and project requests. So it's hard to keep up. We are happy to use our products with different size groups, but we can't do development projects with everyone and that is where we are very selective. Regarding regions, we do have distributors that we are starting to work with around the world thus making our product more accessible!!