1 Standing up for trees everywhere.

BioForest Technologies Inc., a Sault Ste. Marie technology firm, expects a breakout year in 2006. The company is set to strike a deal with one of the world's leading crop sciences companies to commercialize its patent-pending EcoJect pesticide system.

The 11-employee forestry consulting and biotechnology company anticipates signing a partnership agreement with Bayer Crop Sciences this spring to marry Bayer's own pesticide formulation with BioForest's innovative pesticide tree injector. The company intends to bring the device from the prototype stage into full production this year.

"Business is roaring along," says BioForest managing director Craig Howard, who calls a potential deal with Bayer "almost imminent."

His company has a small solution to a big problem that's killing thousands of trees in the United States and southern Ontario.

BioForest has developed a lightweight canister device that can be injected into the trunk of hardwoods and conifers that delivers a concentrated dose of pesticide. Years offield trials in Canada and the U.S. have proven the device works remarkably well against the emerald ash borer.

Foresters in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana have been fighting a pitched battle against the voracious Asian green-winged beetle, whose larvae feed on the inner bark of green, white, blue and black ash trees.

Since the ash borer was discovered in southeastern Michigan near Detroit in 2002, it has killed eight million to 10 million ash trees in those three states. The bug is also established in Windsor and southwestern Ontario.

The company has conducted field trials for the U.S. Forest Service to showcase its product, but Washington has chosen not to expand the department's funding for insect control programs despite infestation problems spreading eastward into other states.

To tackle these kinds of infestations, aerial spray programs, especially in urban areas, sometimes won't work. The end result is trees are cut down.

The EcoJect concept evolved from the company's work in the Muskoka-Georgian Bay cottage country, where aerial spraying using conventional pesticides is not allowed near sensitive shorelines.

With the help of Canadian Forestry Service (CFS) researchers, they've also come up with a companion formula for the injector. The environmentally friendly insecticide is based on the seed extract of the Neem tree, grown in Southeast Asia.

Howard says although his company has the licence agreement from CFS, the Neem formula won't likely be on the market for another two years.

"But that biomagnifies a lot of opportunities."

The formula they'll use this year in their EcoJect device will be the Bayer formulations.

But before the company can make inroads into the lucrative southern Ontario market, Howard says they must get the insecticide registered.

"Bayer had the insecticide that works well, but it wasn't registered in Canada," says Howard. "They have agreed to go forward with the registration, which we expect will be ready in the spring. Once we have those two things together, we start knocking on doors and dealing with whomever needs some trees saved.

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"The formula is what we're waiting on. They (Bayer) are embarking on the registration of an emergency-use insecticide that will be great on the emerald ash borer."

BioForest is being touted by Science Enterprise Algoma and the Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corporation as one of the corporate building blocks for a proposed Invasive Species Centre and a larger bio-products research park. The company is making plans to put the EcoJect into production in the Sault, Barrie and Taiwan.

Howard says they've already made some headway in talking to potential clients. The company is also negotiating with another undisclosed international company on a major deal.

Much of BioForest's pending success has come from their exclusive pipeline into the world-class knowledge base of the Canadian Forest Service labs in the Sault. The 11-year-old company is out to utilize the brainpower at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre and commercialize their research work.

Before establishing the company in 1996, Howard was a CFS chief of regulatory affairs. He was purged in a government downsizing at the Sault lab. Some of his former colleagues have joined him at the Queen Street firm and they have added a branch office in Prince Albert, Sask.

"CFS has many people that are so smart and they're fairly hard to access commercially because some of their work isn't commercial and (researchers) don't think commercially.

"They've got a lot of bright guys there that if we use them right, we can create a lot of stuff."

Besides commercialization activities, BioForest also conducts forest surveys, certification work, audits and provides a suite of pest management services to cottager groups, the provincial government and private American companies managing millions of acres of woodlands. That work brings in money for their development projects.

"Our profits for the last four years have gone into this (EcoJect) development," says Howard. "It's still standing up compared to anything else in the marketplace and now we're finally getting there and that's what we wanted to do."

In January, they were hired by the City of Mississauga to oversee management of their gypsy moth problem, which includes a 500-hectare aerial spray program using Btk, a naturally occurring bacteria registered for use in residential areas.

Joe Meating, the company's forest health management director, says it is the company's first work with a major Canadian city, other than previous contracts with resorts and small municipalities in organizing their pest control problems.

www.bioforest.org

www.bioforest.ca

QUICK FACTS

BioForest Technologies Inc. was founded in Sault Ste. Marie in 1996 by Craig Howard, and is looking to partner with Bayer Crop Sciences to market its EcoJect pesticide device.

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business