"Effort to develop guayule advances"
YUMA SUN, Yuma, Arizona
By: Joyce Lobeck
May 6, 2002The last year has been an eventful one for a company striving to commercially produce rubber products from the desert shrub guayule.
"We haven't gone away," said Jeff Martin, chief executive officer of Yulex Corporation, which was granted a license by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the exclusive right to commercialize the products of natural rubber latex derived from guayule.
FIELD WORKERS cultivate guayule plants being grown near Somerton for seed. "We're moving forward," Martin said last week while in Yuma to check on the progress of the project, which is centered in Arizona and California with much of the work in Yuma County.
Over the years, millions of dollars in research had been conducted on guayule as an alternative rubber source to the tropical plant Havea - the Brazilian rubber tree grown primarily in Southeast Asia. But the research had been shelved after World War II.
That is, until recently when a number of health-care workers began developing life-threatening allergies to the rubber gloves mandated by the federal government to protect them from such diseases as AIDS. It was determined that the latex produced by guayule was non-allergenic, and researchers began taking another look at the alternative rubber source.
"It's challenging to move ahead with a new industrial crop," Martin said.
One of the challenges is to produce seed to grow enough of the crop to make it feasible to market. To that end, guayule seedlings have been raised for the last two years at Southwest Transplant for planting in fields to produce seed.
"We have a significant amount of seed crop in California and Arizona," said Martin. That acreage includes 25 acres near Somerton and San Luis, Ariz.
Guayule produces a latex that makes non-allergenic medical gloves. Martin said he also has met with a number of Arizona farmers who are interested in raising guayule as a new industrial crop. "We have commitments for 11,000 acres around the state. That's more than enough to start the project."
Those acres are in the Hyder area and in Pinal, La Paz and Maricopa counties. There also is "strong interest" by farmers in Imperial Valley, Martin said. None of those acres are in Yuma County because Yulex can't compete with lettuce for the ground here.
"Yuma County is primarily for seed production and the transplant operation," he said. It also will be the site for a pilot plant to be built within the next six month for the bioprocessing of the early plantings, Martin said. Yulex has signed a letter of intent with an agribusiness for a joint venture on the plant to determine the scale of feasibility.
"There's strong interest by the medical community" in the guayule latex, he said. "We do have research agreements. That's why the pilot plant. We want to make sure we can meet their standards in commercial quantity."
Yulex also intends to open a laboratory in Yuma this summer to test the content and quality of the latex produced, based on the various growing conditions, he said.
In other developments, Yulex has obtained a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Martin said. That is in addition to a $2.3 million grant the company received from the USDA to develop the agriculture product. The second grant will be used primarily to fund research into guayule as an alternative rubber source.
However, the company also is partnering in research into sunflowers as yet another rubber source, Martin said.
He explained that more than 2,000 species of plants can produce natural latex. However, only the tropical plant has been cultivated. Of the three largest producing countries (Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand), two have been subject to unrest by their Muslim populations. "So interest has stepped up for latex production in the United States," Martin said.
While Yulex's main thrust has been in the production and marketing of such latex products as medical gloves, catheters and condoms, the company also is talking with a chewing gum manufacturer about using the guayule latex to make gum.
Yulex also is looking at other potential diversification, Martin. For example, a Department of Energy project is looking into the use of guayule byproduct for the production of ethanol for the California market.
Other potential uses for guayule byproducts are a termite-resistant particle board and fiberglass insulation. In addition, guayule byproducts can be processed into resin for protecting wooden buildings, boats, decks and outdoor furniture. Researchers have found that pine blocks impregnated with guayule resin resisted termite and wood-rot damage.
"Our primary focus is latex," Martin said. "The business will be profitable with just that. But there could be added markets for the resins and fibers."