By MARK BUTZOW

Indiana Correspondent

ANDERSON, Ind. — It’s sunrise in America for Italpollina, and its rooster logo is crowing about the start of production at its new North American fertilizer manufacturing plant in central Indiana.

The company’s products have heretofore been developed and packaged in Spain and Italy and available in nearly 80 countries. Italpollina announced Monday that production has started at a third site: A new facility in Anderson that also will serve as North America headquarters for the global company.

“We’re wrapping up commissioning this week, so we’re in production now,” Vice President Jon Leman said last Friday. Phase One of the North American expansion involves creating a single ingredient – vegetal protein hydrolysate (VPH) – that will be sold to other fertilizer companies for use in their products.

“We’ll continue to increase capacity over the next 30 days, bringing more people on board,” he added.

The Italian company announced its intent to build the Indiana headquarters and production site in 2016, and the result is a 70,000 square-foot building housing more than $9 million in equipment.

“The opening of the new plant is an important step for, and into, the future,” said Luca Bonini, CEO. “The most innovative aspect of our company is our commitment to research and the resulting new technologies for sustainable agriculture. The products we are producing in this newly commissioned facility are the fruit of that work, and a bridge to future technologies.”

The company uses proprietary technologies to produce three types of products: organic fertilizers, beneficial microbials and 100 percent vegetal-based biostimulants. The Indiana plant will join a facility in Italy in producing the plant-based biostimulants.

Combined with the existing plant in Italy, the company will have tripled its biostimulants capacity when the new plant reaches full production.

Midwest soybeans will be part of the equation. “We can work with a variety of plant-based substrates,” Leman said, emphasizing there are no animal byproducts used as the protein source.

For more than 50 years, Italpollina said it has used science to enhance agriculture and develop crop nutrition solutions in a more natural way, with an emphasis on and commitment to innovation and sustainability. Italpollina operates three research and development centers, with a fourth, Italpollina Park, slated to break ground later in 2018 adjacent to the newly commissioned plant in Anderson.

A phenomics greenhouse and many growth chambers will be included, creating new-generation biostimulants for the North American market. Researchers will also be able to test new solutions in the field with the most advanced technologies, including hyperspectral sensors installed on drones, the company announced.

Leman said Italpollina is moving on to its second phase this summer, which is adding blending capabilities and an automated packaging line. Once ready for use, the VPH now being manufactured at the plant can be combined with other ingredients to produce known Italpollina brands, such as Trainer amino acids and peptides and the NPK fertilizer Phosphit-One.

The facility will also continue to sell some of its core component to other companies for use in their fertilizer products.

“We feel good about our position in the marketplace,” Leman told Farm World last week. The additional capacity will supply the North American market. “We’re opening operations in Canada, and we now have a subsidiary in Mexico.”