This summer is shaping up to be the busiest season ever for BioForest Technologies Inc.
As ash trees start to bud in mid-May, media and urban foresters in Southern Ontario are signalling Armageddon as the voracious and colourful emerald ash borer beetle starts munching its way across the province.
Joe Meating, president of BioForest, is prepped and ready for it. After brewing a 500-litre test batch of their organic pesticide last year for some potential U.S. business partners for field use, some 30 tree care companies and several municipalities in Ontario and Quebec are ordering his company's TreeAzin formulation to try and contain the bug this summer.
"We're going into this year with several hundred litres ready to go and we'll be producing more," said Meating.
The company has commercialized an all-natural pesticide that was developed in a federal government lab in the Sault where Meating used to work as a forest insect control officer.
Their TreeAzin product uses an active ingredient derived from the neem tree seed in India. His company added a special tree injector to deliver the formulation that has proved successful at effectively shielding ash trees from the beetle in U. S. field trials.
The emerald ash borer was recently found in Hamilton and Meating expects it to basically "fill in the map" this year across southwestern and central Ontario, and eastward into Quebec, where an outbreak was detected southeast of Montreal. The bark-drilling beetle, whose hatched larvae feeds on tree tissue, has the potential to be as devastating as Dutch elm disease in the 1940s to 1960s. Many municipalities planted ash trees as replacements. Now the infestation in Ontario is reaching the critical mass.
"The problem is going to expand more quickly," said Meating. "We're into that phase of the outbreak where populations are building and things are going to happen more quickly."
Up to now, the only solution in affected areas has been cut and burn, and quarantine the transport of fire wood out of affected areas. The company's biggest focus is on the U.S. market where the neem formula has full regulatory approval across the country.
In Canada, Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency has only granted a temporary emergency registration for field use in Ontario and Quebec, which expires at the end of August. Meating said they are working toward full registration of TreeAzin by 2010.
In December, BioForest received an Organic Materials Review Institute listing which allows the pesticide to be used in organic farming once they receive additional approvals from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "The advantage in the U.S. is the active ingredient has been registered for years," with at least 20 approved neem-based formulations, mostly used in agriculture.
With only nine-employees and a potentially huge market to serve, BioForest's business plan is to sell TreeAzin and the injector system to tree care companies and have them offer the service.
"We've been talking with a number of U.S. companies with existing distribution networks about potential partnerships. Those talks have been going very well and we're fairly confident we will have a partner going into 2009."
Research on a consumer version available in stores is in the works. The media attention given to the ash borer has created a steady stream of inquiries to the company. But Meating is disappointed with published comments made by the City of Toronto's director of urban forestry, Richard Ubbens, who said TreeAzin is too expensive to apply -- at $300 per tree -- and is practical for only wealthy homeowners.
Though mystified on where Ubbens got his numbers from, Meating said the per-tree cost of actual neem product is only $40 to $50. What the tree care companies charge to deliver the injection system is beyond his control.
Meating said they have cut the cost of TreeAzin by 15 per cent and the injection system by 20 per cent through manufacturing savings and by sourcing cheaper parts. Though BioForest has provided pesticides and injectors to the City of Toronto, the city's main strategy has been cutting down infected trees and replanting with a more diversified species mix.
Meating said in talking with homeowners about the costs of whether or not to use TreeAzin is akin to weighing a decision on having surgery.
"It's not expensive when considering the tree removal costs of $1,000 to $5,000."
An outbreak of the emerald ash borer was discovered last year in Meating's own community of Sault Ste. Marie. The Sault is at the northern range for the emerald ash borer, having likely jumped the border from Michigan where the insect is well established.
The company is working with city officials to come up with a strategy to tackle it, although no agreement with the municipality has been reached.
On the web:
www.bioforest.ca
