Concerns about the future of our environment as well as emerging diseases that could change our way of life have many people worried. These concerns lead to questions about how quickly cures can be found for new diseases as well as how much big companies are doing to limit their impact on the climate. This is where Rinagro comes in.
Rinagro is a smart farming company from the North of the Netherlands which developed environmentally friendly alternatives for phosphate fertiliser, soil improver, and compost agents by finding a new form of bacteria. With this research, they have also discovered more about how bacterial diseases work and can possibly be cured.
The Northern Times spoke with a representative of Rinagro about what their company does and sells, their research, and the advantages of being located in the Northern Netherlands.
What is your company about and what are its main goals?
Rinagro produces micro-organisms, mainly bacteria, and with those bacteria, we influence the existing living environment of other bacteria.
So we find that we only consider two types of environments, anaerobic (oxygen-poor)and aerobic (oxygen-rich), but we have discovered that there is an intermediate form. With the intermediate form we use, we can restore the anaerobic living environment, or change it so that the bacteria can no longer live in it.
The anaerobic environment is actually the rotten environment and we find out that all pathogens live in an anaerobic environment. So both viruses and bacteria live in an anaerobic environment.
So that also helps in combating viral diseases and we also use it for that purpose.
How is your company contributing to the sustainable development of the northern Netherlands?
If you use our product in an anaerobic process it’s always accompanied by gas emissions. For example, a dead animal that stinks is all about protein breakdown and gases such as nitrogen and methane are emitted and lost to the atmosphere. These processes, the loss of these types of gases from the soil, happen in agriculture 24 hours a day but not many people realise it’s happening.
We can purposefully change that by switching the type of bacteria that are breaking down the carcasses, and then you find out that it no longer emits nitrogen. Stopping these emissions are very important nowadays since they contribute to climate change. This is made possible thanks to these bacteria. And you will only find out if you discover such a bacterial culture through research. Sooner or later people will realise this, but then again, the quicker they realise it the faster we have to keep up with the demand.
What does the marketing look like for a company that also does research and has knowledge a lot of people might not understand yet?
We have our own network. We do that ourselves, we have people for that. And we do that here and there through distributors, but that is difficult because they do not understand the matter.
We have our own sales team, to present this as broadly as possible. After COVID-19, more attention is being paid to the living environment of micro-organisms. Because more and more diseases are emerging and people want to find out what is going on, but we have already figured that out. A lot of people don’t want to understand it because there is still a very large revenue model for the way research is done about this now. But we go against the current. Because there are more and more diseases it’s important to know we already have a solution for that.
I think we should also share our findings on other platforms to show people the importance of the fact there are solutions available for diseases. So that people know what is going on, because there is too little knowledge about nature and many people say ‘You have to let nature take its course and you have to let it repair itself because we have already ruined it’ but I compare it with bad apples.
If you have a bowl of apples and one is rotten and you let nature take its course, they will all be rotten soon. We know that we humans have made a bad contribution to nature, but if we leave it like this, it will continue to get worse unless we step in and make changes ourselves.
What was your experience of developing your company in the Northern Netherlands like?
Because we started in the agricultural sector, this was the perfect place. We actually developed this product from liquid manure. From a completely different line of thought than for example the diseases. But from that position, we have discovered what we actually have and how we can use it for things besides agriculture.
So from now on we will be active in arable farming, with municipalities and we have founded a company for human applications. So the displacement of viruses and bacteria in wounds. And it is already used by diabetes patients. And there are very positive results.
We are now working with sellers in Eindhoven. So then you get a different environment. And they already look at our product very differently, less from an agriculture standpoint and more from a business standpoint. So it will open up a completely different market.
Besides the value of being located in the North, are you also active online?
Yes. We have hired two guys for exports and they also do the built-in marketing. And we are already working on doing that online with some products. Clients can buy it via the website and then the stock is ordered by us on demand.
This is not yet the case with the agricultural sector, with that, you actually have to go out yourself. That’s a completely different market.
In the agricultural sector, the Netherlands is improving online. But abroad, Germany for example, online is lagging behind, much still has to be done on paper or by post. And there are actually no orders placed online, just a few.
How active are you abroad?
We have two German companies, GmbHs. One of those guys I mentioned before is working there and we also have extra employees available to come in soon. But that still has to follow from the ground up, because we are very active there. However, we encountered quite some opposition in Germany.
In what way?
We have our own legislation. So they sometimes use German law to harass another company, a foreign company.
And that is why you can almost, or I think completely, no longer get loans from a Dutch bank for German companies or German business forms or real estate because the legal network in Germany is very different from that in the Netherlands. And they get stuck with that. This pulls them into the depths. I have several examples of banks and companies becoming victims of a notarial misunderstanding.
What challenges did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?
Through trial and error you become wise, right? You learn from your mistakes. One of them is the German story. That is improving now because we have all won the lawsuits. But you do have a lag of four or five years there.
But other than that, things are going just fine. We grow against the current. Because the market is just ripe for it.
What has been your greatest lesson learnt?
That there is quite a lot of resistance to innovation. We are all concerned with the environment and have to solve it ourselves. But people still go for the cheapest methods and technologies even if they’re older. They won’t immediately use the innovative ones. Even though the older ones aren’t usually environmentally friendly.
What are your future plans in terms of developing your company?
Grow bigger and hire more people. We now have 3 new employees starting in September and the 4th is on their way. And towards America, we are already active in Canada, we have a worldwide patent, so we also have options in Australia and New Zealand, but also Asia and Russia.
