Nutjobs' Compostable Pots and Produce Trays Expected to Be Available in Q3

Buoyed by winning the Western Growers AgSharks competition last fall, Nutjobs, a company that uses nut waste to create sustainable packaging products, is moving full steam ahead on production with the expectation of bringing products to market by the third quarter of this year.

Nutjobs is the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Paul and Marta Kephart. Paul developed the concept working with a coffee grinder, eco-friendly resins, and shells and hulls from nut processing; Marta serves as Nutjobs’ CEO and is charged with bringing the idea to market.

In an exclusive interview with OPN Connect, Paul said he is an ecologist who has been designing sustainable landscape projects for more than three decades. He and Marta worked on many of those projects together, but they wanted to focus on something that would be “scalable and have a bigger impact on the environment.”

Paul Kephart, Founder and CTO, Nutjobs

The discovery process led them to environmentally friendly packaging—specifically agricultural packaging—to help eliminate single-use plastic, which has become a scourge on Mother Earth.

“I began looking at what nature has designed as a starting point,” Paul said. “Some people say the eggshell is a perfect package, but I settled on nutshells and hulls. They are impact resistant and offer thermal insulation.”

At that point, Kephart began his experimentation with the nut waste, a grinder, and bio-resins to create bio-benign plastic alternatives. His initial work led to the development of four patent-pending proprietary bio-composite formulations for resins and pellets—Almalose and Almonica. Almalose generates end-use products that are soft, pliable, and insulating, while Almonica is used to create rigid and durable products, such as nursery pots.

“I began looking at what nature has designed as a starting point. Some people say the eggshell is a perfect package, but I settled on nutshells and hulls. They are impact resistant and offer thermal insulation.” - Paul Kephart

The products are built with green chemistry and designed to be compostable. Kephart pointed out that while Nutjobs is developing its own branded end-use products (AlmaPot, AlmaTray, and AlmaPak) for commercial horticulture and consumer packaging, it will not be in the manufacturing business. The company will provide the pellets and resins, allowing for the manufacture of such items.

Nutjobs' AlmaPot

First up for Nutjobs is the nursery container, AlmaPot. Paul explained that in creating sustainable landscape spaces, each Kephart project would conclude with hundreds of plastic pots that needed to be disposed of. That seemed like the perfect place to begin the effort to eliminate single-use plastic. “We wanted to walk the walk,” Paul revealed.

The company has landed a significant contract to deliver its initial product to a large nursery supply house over the next five years.

Nutjobs Dunningan hulling and shelling

“Be careful what you wish for,” Paul quipped, noting that building a production facility to produce the pellets and resins is a challenge.

At the same time, his wife Marta has been hard at work putting together the pieces to allow Nutjobs to grow rapidly.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Kephart quipped, noting that building a production facility to produce the pellets and resins is a challenge.

“We are starting to scale and will soon be in production,” Paul said. “Everything takes longer than you think, but we expect to have product by Q3 of this year.”

From a technical viewpoint, Nutjobs' resins and pellets are replacements for polystyrene (Styrofoam) and polypropylene, the harder, more rigid plastic used in nursery pots. The nut waste-based polystyrene alternative is perfect for creating compostable produce and meat trays.

Nutjobs' AlmaTray

“That market is absolutely enormous,” Kephart said, adding that polystyrene accounts for about one-third of all the material in the nation’s landfills. Another potential use for the soft, pliable Almalose NutJobs pellets is the development of a product that can replace the bubble wrap often used in mailing envelopes.

Kephart said one of the main factors allowing Nutjobs to create these products in an economically viable way is that nut waste is very cheap and plentiful. In California, nearly six billion pounds of nutshell and hull waste is generated every year, according to the Nutjobs website. This waste product has low-value use as dairy cattle feed, but the high cost of transporting it means this use is limited. Over the next five years—even with accelerated growth—Nutjobs will only use about 3 percent of California's nut waste supply.

Bio-resins—created mostly as byproducts of sugar and corn crops—do play on the open market, so there is some price volatility that comes with using those raw materials, Kephart said.

“We are starting to scale and will soon be in production. Everything takes longer than you think, but we expect to have product by Q3 of this year.” - Paul Kephart

The key to the company producing cost-competitive products is in the scaling. The initial manufacturing model will produce Nutjobs pellets at a rate of 500 to 1500 pounds per hour. Over time, Kephart said that production rate will increase many times over.

Kephart said the whimsical company name was his idea, representing not only what they do but also reflecting the mindset needed to develop the idea in the first place.

“You have to be somewhat of a nutjob to think that nutshells can solve our issue with single-use plastic,” he said. “But sometimes the best solutions are the most obvious.”