EnergyEne, Inc. is an industrial materials company focusing on the development, improvement, and commercialization of sustainable rubber and biomaterials from Guayule Natural Rubber emulation for use in first medical devices, second consumer products, and third in industrial sectors. EnergyEne will continue to participate in the basic research to improve the yield from the plants and the process.
Rubber is essential to nearly all manufacturing and product sectors, ranking fourth overall for industrial natural resources, with global demand at over $100 billion divided approximately 58% / 42% between synthetic and natural rubber (Indian Rubber Board; Indian Rubber Statistics, Ministry of Commerce and Industry). Synthetic rubber does not have the strength, flexibility, or performance characteristics of natural rubber. The International Rubber Study Group (IRSG) is predicting a shortfall of 1.5 to 3 million metric tons by 2020, which would create significant disruptions and economic losses in the U.S. Additional barriers to increasing worldwide production is that new plantings of Hevea require significant lead time (5+ years) before the plants mature enough to tap. Clearly, more sustainable, domestically available, and rapidly scalable alternative sources and approaches are needed to fill the predicted shortfalls. Hevea rubber is handled and marked-up many times (as many as 29) before an end-product is produced. EnergyEne expects to limit the product handling (from farm to end product) to less than five intermediaries.