ANN ARBOR, Mich., - April 17, 2017 - Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB: KBLB) (“Company”), the leading developer of spider silk based fibers, announced today that it is expanding domestic recombinant spider silk production capacity with the purchase and installation of a new commercial scale cocoon processing machine. This new equipment arrived in early April, is being installed now, and is expected to be fully operational before the end of the month.
This machine replaces a much smaller cocoon processing machine the Company has been using to produce materials under a contract with the US Army. The increased capacity and efficiency this new equipment offers will free up production staff and lower overall costs.
Over the next month the Company plans to supply the Army with sample single filament Dragon Silk fibers for independent testing and to have the first batch of finished Dragon Silk thread ready for knitting into Ballistic shootpacks. The Company anticipates completing the additional silk necessary for producing the woven shootpacks for the US Army in the third quarter. This newly installed equipment is expected to play an important role in meeting this new timeline.
“In many cases, up until now, we’ve been working with research scale equipment as we transitioned out of the laboratory,” said COO Jon Rice. “We had originally hoped to have completed all silk production for the first Army contact by now. That timeline, in consultation with our customer, has been extended due to challenges that a third party vendor had in scheduling and processing as well as the throughput limitations of our production facility in its first month of operations. This new equipment can process more cocoons in one hour than we currently process in a month and it is expected to play an important role in meeting the new timeline. This new commercial scale machine is expected to sustain our domestic production capacity through 2019 and reduce labor costs significantly.”
In addition to its planned expansion of domestic production, the Company, as earlier announced, is working to establish a significant overseas production operation.
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