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Except I'd hardly call the competition big boys. They have better financing than kblb to be sure but they're hardly big boys. No, I I think there's just a perception , even if not true or fair, that kblb isn't a serious contender. More times than not , kblb doesn't get a mention so I suppose we should be grateful this time they did.
Speaking of planting trees, I suspect KT only started doing trees and a facility here in the U.S out of desperation and not because of some requirement by the army that the fiber is made here, as some have proposed. I think the army only requires the final product be made or assembled here, so they can put the "made in the USA" stamp on it. I doubt there's a requirement for the actual fibers to be made here as well. I'm not sure but that's my thought.
Lol yep it wasn't much of a mention but we've come to expect it. The press doesn't give kblb serious attention. Seems to suit KT fine. He is in hiding after all.
I don't know if this has been posted yet; frankly I haven't even read it yet. I just literally came across it
Volume 95 Issue 8 | pp. 18-20
Issue Date: February 20, 2017
Delivering on spider silk’s promise
Prototype products emerge, but scale-up challenges persist
By Alex Scott
A photo of a running shoe designed by Adidas made using synthetic spider silk fiber.
Adidas’s spider silk running shoes will be AMSilk’s largest application when they launch later this year.
Credit: AMSilk
Adidas, The North Face, and Patagonia are among the brands jostling to become the first to launch a mass-market product made from synthetic spider silk. Adidas is racing to introduce a biodegradable running shoe made from the silk later this year. The North Face’s Moon Parka with waterproof spider silk fiber could become a must-have for eco-minded fashionistas.
But don’t ditch your old nylon running shoes and jackets quite yet. Behind the scenes, manufacturers are having problems translating lab-based processes for the novel material to commercial scale. Spider silk developers Bolt Threads and Spiber—both keen on explaining how their silk will change the world—have stumbled and been forced to delay initial product rollouts.
While the grind toward commercialization continues, companies are abuzz about possible uses for spider silk. It is made using renewable raw materials. It’s biodegradable yet waterproof. It’s strong and elastic. Spider silk is even garnering interest from developers of cosmetics and medical devices. And with academic researchers unearthing new knowledge about how to make it and enhance its functionality, spider silk’s range of potential applications continues to expand.
California-based Bolt Threads has the highest profile of the spider silk developers. It got off the ground with $40 million in funding and raised another $50 million last year to develop its textile manufacturing process. Bolt makes its silk protein via fermentation with recombinant yeast that contains DNA copied from spiders.
In 2015, Bolt said it would introduce a commercial spider silk thread-spinning process in the summer of 2016. That deadline came and went.
Now, the firm says the spinning process is in place. In the past few weeks, Bolt adds, it has begun transferring its lab-scale process into commercial-scale operations for three customers, including apparel maker Patagonia, with which it is making a jacket. The attraction is that spider silk thread is waterproof, so clothing makers don’t need to use fluorochemical waterproofing agents, which are under fire for persisting in the environment.
Bolt may not yet be selling its product commercially, but the firm is bullish about its chances of success. “We look forward to the fashion and function trends that Bolt Threads will lead in textiles,” it says.
A waterproof jacket made from spider silk fiber.
The North Face’s Moon Parka, made with Spiber’s synthetic spider thread, has experienced product launch delays.
Credit: Spiber
Japan-based Spiber, which ferments its silk with recombinant Escherichia coli bacteria, has also experienced delays. The firm had planned to bring its first product—the $1,000 Moon Parka jacket, developed with apparel makers Goldwin and The North Face—to market at the end of 2016, but the launch has been pushed back to the first part of 2017.
Neither Bolt nor Spiber will say why it delayed rollout of its first products.
Even if Spiber goes commercial soon, Victor Oh, lead analyst for biobased materials with the market research firm Lux Research, is skeptical about the number of Moon Parkas that the company and The North Face will be able to produce. “I don’t expect to see a lot of it on the market,” he says.
The Moon Parka does show that spider silk is a premium material that can attract a premium price, Oh says. The challenge, he adds, will be competing on price in mass-market textile applications. Long term, spider silk developers have to target a cost of less than $10 per kg if their material is to compete with conventional textiles on a mass-market scale, Oh says.
Spiber has publicly stated that its commercial-scale silk will cost $20–$30 per kg.
Randy Lewis, a biology professor at Utah State University and a spider silk technology pioneer, can’t see any scenario where spider silk fiber can compete with basic nylon or polyester. “We are never going to make spider silk for $10 to $15 per kg, even with the perfect fermentation and purification process. It just can’t be done,” Lewis says.
A photo of researchers electrospinning spider silk protein fibers.
Chemists in Randy Lewis’s lab at Utah State University undertake electrospinning of spider silk protein fibers.
Credit: Utah State University
Bolt previously told C&EN that it is targeting a cost of $100 per kg. But the company has yet to unveil a full prototype product. “To me, this suggests it will be 2018 before they get something over the line,” Oh says. Nonetheless, he sees Bolt as one of the front-runners, along with Spiber and AMSilk.
Germany-based AMSilk is ahead of the pack when it comes to selling spider silk protein in nonfiber form. It has been selling its protein—made with E. coli fermentation—for cosmetics since 2014. The technology was developed by Thomas Scheibel, a professor of biomaterials at Bayreuth University.
The firm has since refined its spinning technology and is eyeing the use of its Biosteel brand spider silk thread in biodegradable footwear. Last year, the firm announced plans to make running shoes with apparel giant Adidas.
“The shoe is going to be selling at a premium but not above prices for the premium sport shoe market.”
—Jens Klein, CEO of AMSilk, on the Adidas running shoe that will use its spider silk
AMSilk’s sales are growing at more than 30% annually, and major contracts are in the pipeline, says Chief Executive Officer Jens Klein. In cosmetics, spider silk protein can provide breathable skin protection and act as an antiwrinkle ingredient. AMSilk’s spider silk protein is already used in more than 20 products sold by specialty cosmetics firms, Klein adds.
Spider silk’s advantage over other naturally derived products is that it can be produced with consistent quality in the volumes required, Klein says. In the future, the firm may offer different grades. For instance, it could go a step below its optimal purification level for nonpremium applications, he says.
Cosmetics manufacturers typically order multiple kilograms of spider silk protein at a time. But AMSilk’s collaboration with Adidas is a larger-volume opportunity. Adidas wants to sell hundreds of thousands of the shoes. “This very quickly brings us into the multi-ton area. We are on our way,” Klein says.
Adidas has chosen spider silk for the shoe primarily because it is made from renewable resources and is biodegradable. “The shoe is going to be selling at a premium but not above prices for the premium sport shoe market,” Klein says.
Klein claims not to have had sleepless nights over production scale-up. AMSilk already successfully contracts out its spider silk protein production, and the market has spare capacity, he says. For spinning, AMSilk has some capacity in-house. With the Adidas contract looming, it is considering whether to expand this or outsource production, Klein says.
AMSilk’s medical applications are also moving forward. The firm has spent the past two-and-a-half years testing to ensure spider silk is safe to go inside people. A spider silk protein film does not kill bacteria but rather prevents them from colonizing. That feature could make it useful for coating materials, such as breast implant linings, that come into contact with people.
Lewis’s lab at Utah State is also looking at the use of spider silk protein coatings in medical products such as sutures, artificial ligaments, and wound patches.
Unlike other organizations, though, Lewis is developing a suite of hosts for producing spider silk proteins, including genetically engineered E. coli, goats, silkworms, and alfalfa. “We are now making sure we can scale up so we can do prototype development. We’re teaming up with companies,” he says.
Lewis acknowledges challenges. “When it comes to E. coli, I’d like to say we have got things sorted, but this is not the case yet,” he says. “The major challenge is a purification protocol that is both efficient and as cheap as possible.”
Lewis has two 500 L fermentation reactors at his disposal for making spider silk protein with genetically engineered E. coli. By summer he will be able to generate about 1 kg of protein per week, he figures. “For most prototypes, it should be fine.” A decision will be made in the coming months as to which application to commercialize first.
A photo of spider silk being woven by machine.
AMSilk is still deciding whether to outsource its spider silk fiber production or make it in-house.
Credit: AMSilk
Candidates include spider silk-coated catheters and implants, Lewis says. Coating a catheter with spider silk protein prevents bacteria buildup and thus helps avoid the $13,000 per patient it costs to treat the average catheter infection. Lewis says he is now working with small technology companies on catheter development.
Lewis’s transgenic goats generate spider silk protein in their milk. The best goats produce 8 L of milk per day with a protein yield of 2 g/L. The purification process is straightforward, Lewis says, and scale-up can be rapid. “In less than a year, we could clone 100 goats from the eight to 10 top-producing goats that we have,” he says.
Indiana-based Kraig Biolabs has engineered a transgenic silkworm that generates a hybrid of worm and spider silk. For Kraig, scale-up starts with the planting of mulberry trees to provide silkworm food.
The firm says it will soon start planting 2,000 trees at a newly acquired site in Texas. It already has a facility in Indiana about one-tenth the size that generates enough silk to supply the Army with test material for ballistic clothing. The firm’s long-term sights, though, are on production in Vietnam, where an established silkworm industry already exists.
The introduction of novel genetic engineering techniques and more complex protein designs have already enabled Kraig to raise its worms’ ratio of spider silk to worm silk, says Kim K. Thompson, the firm’s founder and CEO. His ultimate goal is to generate pure spider silk.
While companies move forward in fits and starts, progress in academic labs could broaden the application of spider silk in next-generation products.
For example, the Karolinska Institute recently published a study showing that synthetic spider silk fiber strength can be enhanced markedly if the silk is spun in a way that mimics the spinning glands of spiders (Nat. Chem. Biol. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2269).
Developments in a lab run by Neil R. Thomas, professor of medicinal and biological chemistry at the University of Nottingham, point to new applications. David Harvey, while a Ph.D. student in Thomas’s lab, published research showing that it is possible to conjugate organic ligands to spider silk to confer either antibiotic or fluorescent properties (Adv. Mater. 2016, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201604245).
A commercial spider silk antibiotic dressing could be on the market within four or five years after clinical trials involving conditions such as diabetic ulcers, Thomas says. Harvey’s paper has already attracted messages from spider silk producers interested in collaborating on the technology, Thomas adds.
For spider silk firms, adding functionality is a likely key to long-term success. Before then, however, they must overcome their teething problems and get those Adidas shoes and that Moon Parka out of the lab and into clothing stores.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i8/Delivering-spider-silks-promise.html
Would be nice. These things don't happen overnight though. They just announced in Dec that they are only now ready to ship and sell samples after completing batch for Army. It can be a year or more for a company to evaluate , test, and sign an agreement.
What did you have in mind? Doesn't look like today's the day. I don't expect any earth shaking news until and if and when they reach a final agreement with Vietnam. That still seems months off from where I sit. And many more months before they are reeling silk in Vietnam. Hope I'm wrong but my expectations are low. KT has a gift for getting hopes up but ultimately disappointing.
I think it'll be a better 2017, but in the second half. I think a partnership/JV is coming but I don't see why any one would partner up before kblb makes headway in Vietnam. If im one of those companies , I'm waiting for kblb to get Vietnam done first.
I agree wholeheartedly. KT set high expectations and and then didn't come close to executing. I don't know how anyone can continue to make excuses for him at this point. Good founder , lousy CEO. Now he's in hiding , not speaking to shareholders.
Thanks King. Good read.
What does good and evil have to do with anything regarding kblb ?
I just want us to make money , not start a holy war.
Thanks Floyd, I hadn't seen this.
You the man Mojo. Keep em coming.
Very Good points and I know it's easy for me to sit here and Monday QB. All we can do is hope and wait. Wait and hope.
Yep, as long as Kim Thompson continues to operate the company in an amateurish unprofessional manner with silence and secrecy, Wall Street and banks will not take him seriously. He probably couldn't get a 10k loan. But he doesn't need to. He can just continue diluting existing shareholders with no end in sight.
Institutional money won't touch this stock with a 10 foot pole. I don't blame them. Kim Thompson has zero credibility with institutions. Its a joke when he talks about uplisting. Pure fantasy and BS from Kim at this point.
Thanks Penny, I appreciate the
That's not what I meant. What I meant is Kim is responsible for the business decisions he's made as CEO. He's invested many years in trying to set up shop in Vietnam. Good decision? Time will tell.
Yeah but kblb has been selling shares for 10 years and they don't have a product either. What's the difference ? I think you may be referring to their old location? I thought I read they moved to Carolina but I may be mistaken. Anyway, if they're a scam, they'll have to answer to their private investors. I doubt they are a scam anymore than kblb. Just been struggling like kblb. Both I think are overcoming their setbacks.
Thanks ES1
Self-explanatory no? Why does any public company hold a conference call, both quarterly and yearly? To keep its shareholders informed about the company; not only to discuss the previous quarter but also to provide a little color on outlook going forward. Most importantly it's an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions and raise concerns. Some may prefer having their investments keep them n the dark and cling to blind hope and that's fine; but I'd argue they are in the minority.
Also I'd be curious to learn why they received 3 x the amount from the army than we did. What's up with that ?!
Good info thanks. Might be in both companies' interest to eventually merge or for kblb to buy them at some point. If for nothing else , a more mature tree farm in SC.
I did not know this, thank you! Follow up question. How long can they survive being frozen and still used for our purposes? If he's got 10's of thousands of eggs frozen ready to rain on Vietnam then I'll feel a lot better about our future !
lol no. Just unimaginative. First thing that came to mind. Since that's what I'm betting on.
"because he has been wrong 100%."
You had me rolling on this as I've had same experience. I don't recall him being right once, lmao. He's a really nice guy but I think his sole job is just to body block for Kim and he's not really an IR guy like his title claims.
We agree on EVERYTHING except I was never a hit and run guy. This is my first company I'm at the plate with. Kim is on the pitching mound and it's been a swing and a miss for years. Fortunately I get unlimited swings and I just need to hit what Kim is pitching out of the park once. Good luck to you and us all brother!
I don't think it's a scam anymore than kblb is. That's a little harsh. Their CEO is really putting his face and neck out there and staking his reputation on his business model. Your argument that they are a scam is the same exact argument that one can make about kblb. I don't think either is a scam. I just think both have experienced major setbacks. I think they are both close. I think the race is definitely on. 2017 should prove interesting to see who crosses the finish line first in relation to putting a product on shelves. I hope it's kblb but I think we should respect Bolt Threads as a competitor at this point.
I respectfully disagree. He could give guidance, direction, CLARITY and TAKE QUESTIONS without revealing details that he doesn't want to give. He's done it twice before.
lol, I agree it was horribly performed. I'd still rather have a bad one than not have one at all however. There was good info to be had in it. Well, at the time it seemed to be good info. Alot of it never came to fruition obviously.
I'm also still a little aggravated that Ben told me to expect an update on the sports apparel company in 3rd quarter and that never came to pass. I don't blame him. I think Jon or Kim approved him to say it. That's what aggravates me. I don't like all this innuendo and word play. Real companies don't even tell a shareholder like me anything like that in an email. They hold quarterly calls and tell everyone together at once.
Thanks, I don't recall seeing this article before. I'll highlight this portion of your clipping:
That doesn’t rule out the possibility of some other type of Bolt Threads product hitting shelves sooner, however. The company has previously predicted it would bring a product to market sometime this year and its website presently declares, “Stay tuned. We are planning to change your clothes in 2016.”
So obviously 2016 came and went and they had nothing. Maybe that'll be the case with March as well.
Trust me, I want Bolt Threads progress to be slowed. I don't mind a little competition and in fact competition is good for the spider silk industry and our company as a whole as it will just bring more attention to kblb. However, I really don't want Bolt Threads to be first to market. I don't think that will be good for us and kblb at all. It would likely mean we lose potential sales/deals. It may not just be us shareholders losing patience; I'm sure at least some potential customers are losing theirs as well. I don't want to see them flocking to Bolt.
Maybe that's my problem of late. I'm feeling a little nervous about the competition.
Honestly, it's just the lack of a CC and my perception of slight to us shareholders by this CEO that's driving me mad. I don't need the money now. I may in fact choose to sit on these shares for years to come. Depends on whether I see a long term future in this company. Which I did see. I kinda still do. I think. This lack of transparency and clarity is driving me cookoo if you can't tell. Maybe it's the lack of a defined timeline with Vietnam that's making me impatient. I don't know.
Can anyone come up with a plausible and acceptable explanation as to why Kim won't do a cc ? Am I the only one that cares that a cc doesn't happen?
"few choices left"
Now that's the truth. And in honestly I could take a small profit now, walk away and quit whining. I don't want a small profit though after waiting all these years lol so I continue to sit on my shares and fume :)
My previous comments came from both the fortune article that TRUTH just referenced and me reaching out to the company late last year.
When I noticed they had stopped blogging last year (I believe their last one was in August) I emailed them in Dec and said what gives? You guys still alive? ( I was of course hoping they weren't )
They responded don't worry you'll be getting alot of news from us early next year, starting with a product launch around March. Again, I take it with a grain of salt but that's what they claim. Feel free to email them. The part I mentioned about having 3 customers I took directly from the fortune article.
"The key to this is to allow the process to take place."
We've been allowing it to take place for years. At some point we have to question management and the process; not just tow the line.
Again, it may not be true, but Kim is giving the perception that he is afraid of shareholder's questions or has something to hide by not holding an annual shareholder's meeting. There is no good legitimate excuse for not talking to your shareholders at least once a year.
We're not asking for trade secrets. No one expects him to reveal anything that may aid the competition.
Surely he must realize he sows doubt and speculation as to the credibility of himself and the company by remaining in the shadows when a simple cc would put to rest alot of questions.
I keep asking myself, why would a CEO of a public company behave this way. Is he simply hiding bad news from shareholders? Put it out there Kim. We're big boys. I'd rather hear about setbacks and other issues than not hear anything at all.
At the very least, he's been very disrespectful to shareholders and unprofessional in his role as the CEO of a public company. that's my humble opinion. I know many of you disagree but I'm not here to make friends. Frankly I'm only here posting in the hopes of motivating more of you to reach out to the company and demand a cc. Maybe we'll get one if the grumblings get loud enough. Then I can go back to my years of silently suffering as a long time kblb shareholder lol. For those of you who want me to shut up and go away, email Kim and help make the CC happen and I'll grant your wishes :)
(Actually , I've already grown tired of posting so I'll be disappearing soon enough )
Nor am I. I just want kblb to be successful and us with it. I'm afraid it won't happen until KT steps down as CEO. Smart guy , just not good at running a public company. Seriously, he's had monster silk for years. Vietnam taking this long is on him. A good CEO finds a way. He should have found a way to make it happen years ago or move on to another option.
Good point. I hope they can and are.
Well, if they are to believed, they are going straight to a product release with Patagonia very soon, probably March. There was another recent article in fortune magazine, I think , that said they now have 3 customers (two yet to be named) and this is supposedly the month they are ramping up production.
I know there's been debates here about efficiency and cost of making spider silk fibers out of yeast. Not to mention strength and elasticity.
Their initial cost of setting up their facilities and machines may be higher but it seems to me that they may have the most cost efficient solution in the long run. Their method seems to be much more automated and won't be as dependent and at the mercy of labor costs and international agreements at the same level we will be.
The more vats they have churning goo, the lower their costs will be. Automation and scale should create substantial cost efficiencies. I could see them growing and expanding quickly once they perfect their method (which it sounds like they may already have ) while we continue to wait for Vietnam to make or break us. Then there is our unknown costs for us. Labor rates, labor disputes, etc
I don't pretend to have the answers but this is why KT should at least hold a yearly conference call. He creates this atmosphere of doubt and speculation by not being more direct and not following up on past statements. He behaves as if kblb is still a private company. Its not. He took it public. He may be the largest shareholder but he still has an obligation to the rest of us. Instead , he remains in hiding. He could be dead since 2015. We wouldn't know the difference. Its ridiculous.
Hope springs eternal.
Bolt Threads certainly seems to be making all the right moves. They're not even a public company but they inform us more than our own company does lol
I can't help but compare:
Bolt Threads has 80 employees
KBLB has 2 employees.
BOLT Threads will have their first product released this month or March at latest.
Kraig Biocraft will have their first product released ?
Bolt Threads has a huge beautiful state of the art facility.
KBLB has plastic bins full of silkworms in a small room , er, I mean "facility"
Bolt Threads is using social media well. Twitter , Facebook , a blog, active news media presence.
Bolt Threads CEO has been making appearances on various media outlets.
Kraig Biocraft has a CEO who occasionally poses for pictures in a lab coat.
Bolt Threads just added a blog post:
https://thespool.boltthreads.com/2017/02/15/how-it-all-began/
Bolt Threads is a team of eighty people with robust technology nearing product release, but our path here wasn’t inevitable and we certainly didn’t get here overnight!
It all started back when our co-founders Dan, David, and Ethan met in 2009. (Cue the flashback harp sound effects.) Ethan and Dan were UC San Francisco PhD students making microbes produce silk and David was a UC Berkeley PhD student using microfluidic devices to mimic the process of spiders spinning silk. Ethan and Dan had taken a UCSF class called Idea to IPO and their infectious enthusiasm about starting a company convinced David to join them.
Bolt founders
Dan is not only a great CEO; he doubles as a sturdy armrest
The three of them successfully applied for research grants and became proud tenants of the QB3 Garage, UC San Francisco’s startup incubator space. They worked out of the Garage for a little over a year before raising their first round of funding under the name Refactored Materials and moving into a larger incubator space in San Francisco. With this funding they hired their first employees, and thus began our journey into something bigger than our founders.
After one too many times having to explain the word “refactored”, we rebranded to Bolt Threads in 2014. Our growth continued and in 2015 we relocated our office and labs from our 6,000 square feet of San Francisco incubator space to our own custom 32,000 square-foot facility in Emeryville, where we now have 80 employees.
old lab
From our humble beginnings…
moving truck
to packing everything into a moving truck …
Emeryville fermentation
…and relocating into our own lovely facility.
We’ve come a long way from being just three founders with an idea, and en route we’ve created, scrapped, merged, and rearranged everything from departments to projects and policies. Throughout all this change, the unrelenting motivation and dedication of our talented staff has remained constant. To celebrate them, our next blog posts will feature the heroes of Bolt Threads – the people who make it all happen.
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lol I was really hoping you all wouldn't be so agreeable. I don't want to be right and was really hoping you all would convince me I'm dead wrong lol. Good luck to us all.
I'm in complete agreement. I think I bought my first years in 2011? 2010? I don't remember anymore. I sold all my original shares in 2013 in disgust. Then I ended up jumping back in same year and have been accumulating since. A long time to be tortured. Misery loves company though and I know I have a lot of company here.
IF the army awards them phase II. Their are lots of companies that never get phase II awarded to them. The tests can be successful and the army can still choose not to award phase II simply because of budget concerns or something else. I'm just warning those that assume the army contract is a "given" that it is NOT a given. I hope it happens but we have to be prepared for the possibility it doesn't. If it happens, that could still be a year away. None of us know how long the Army will take.
Normally I would agree with you that the stock would break out upon announcement of a Vietnam agreement and it would likely pop for a couple of weeks, however I think it would then settle back down to single digits. I think this because KT has lost his credibility. After the initial euphoria wore off everyone would then be wondering exactly how long it would take for Vietnam to actually produce product and revenue. Then the speculation will start that it is probably at least a year away. Unless KT came out and gave GUIDANCE. Which he won't. He never does. He'll leave us here trying to guess exactly what the new agreement means. Oh he may tell us "SOON". lol. Which means anywhere from 6 months to 6 years.
I hate being so negative and I'm in it for the long term regardless. I have too many shares and I'm greedy and refuse to let go. But I am so sick of KT not being straight with us. He needs to start talking to us. And the hyped up newsletter does not count; with talks of "soon" and "we'll update you in the months to come" (pillow talk, they almost never follow thru with updates).