BioHarvest – Growing Wellness Through Biofarming
It isn’t often that a company surfaces with real breakthrough potential. BioHarvest could be one of them.
BioHarvest is a biotech company unlocking the cellular biological secrets of plants and fruits to bring wellness to consumers. It all revolves around a unique technology platform that took 12 years and more than $35 million dollars to develop - Biofarming.
BioHarvest’s patented Biofarming technology has the capability to take any active ingredient - in this case secondary metabolites which are essential for our overall health and wellness - from any plant or fruit, and grow it in a cell while maintaining its natural structure and composition. Nothing is ever genetically modified.
The cells are grown in liquid bioreactors over 21 days before they are harvested and dried to a powder. The powder is extremely soluble, which allows the active ingredient to be easily absorbed into the intestinal tract and blood to ensure maximum efficacy. This is a significant improvement over competitive products that are often poorly absorbed and expelled from the body without delivering all the available health benefits.
While the potential health benefits of Biofarming alone are impressive, there are other advantages to this technology, all of which could be game changing. Once a cell is created from a plant or fruit, it can be produced at scale without the need to ever use the source materials again. This goes a long way to support sustainability, which is at the core of Biofarming. It means huge reductions in land, water and energy utilization and the consistent production of products without fertilizers or contaminants given the aseptic environment in which cells are grown.
The first validation of the Biofarming technology is a dietary supplement called VINIA®. Ilan Sobel, CEO of BioHarvest calls it “our blood flow superfood.” He goes on to explain, “VINIA® was developed to emulate some of the benefits that come from the moderate daily consumption of red wine. This is most evident in France. Despite their fatty diet, the French have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world. So, we decided to apply our Biofarming technology to the red grape.”
BioHarvest took piceid resveratrol, a core ingredient that helps to optimize cardiovascular health, from the skin of the grape and is now the only company in the world able to produce it at industrial and commercial scale. Clinical trial results, all of which have been published in peer reviewed scientific journals, demonstrate at least a 70% dilation of arteries after taking 400mg daily of Vinia for only three months. This supports heart health by increasing blood flow and delivery of oxygen and improves physical energy and mental alertness. One capsule of VINIA® contains approximately the same amount of Piceid Resveratrol as one bottle of red one without any calories, sugar and alcohol.
Vinia was recently launched in Israel and is already showing promising results. In Q2 2021 BioHarest earned more that US$400K from e-commerce sales alone, a phenomenal performance for a country of about 9 million. The company also just started its US rollout.
Sometime in 2022 BioHarvest will venture out into another vertical with the launch of a cannabis product, and Sobel is confident that BioHarvest has something that the market sorely wants. “We’re producing a grade of cannabis that the industry has never seen before based on fingerprint consistency, and in the cannabis world, this is so important, specifically for medicinal cannabis. Several titans of the food and beverage industry are sitting on the sidelines because they don't know how to handle an inconsistent supply. We can create a product with remarkable consistency and purity to address all the pain points that pharma and consumer goods companies are trying to solve in this area.”
Biofarming also allows BioHarvest to produce cannabis at a cost advantage as it bypasses the inefficiency of growing the entire plant when all is needed are the active ingredients. This will enable them to compete effectively against established players in the market like Canopy (TSX: WEED, NASDAQ: CGC).
Beyond VINIA® and cannabis, the BioHarvest product pipeline is full of opportunities. They are currently working with pomegranate and olive cells and are exploring other vertices that leverage the power of their Biofarming technology. “We have leaders from other industries who are coming to us and saying, ‘can you guys do this?’ But as attractive as ‘this’ is, we have to be very focused to ensure we're executing on our priorities,” Sobel insists. “After 18 years of working in senior management in the Coca-Cola Company on a global level, I’ve learned how to focus. In the next two years, we’ll build out and apply our technology to one, maybe two more verticals. If we're improving the lives of consumers every day, then we're going to be able to generate significant shareholder value.”
Based on the disruptive potential of Biofarming, that shareholder value could be significant. BioHarvest operates within a global US$110 billion dollar nutraceutical dietary supplements market. Even though it shares the market with heavyweights like Jamieson Wellness (TSX: JWEL) Sobel sees nothing but tremendous growth potential ahead. “We have a US$140 million dollar market cap and we've just started executing in the USA, the largest Nutraceutical market.
“Every day we're literally charting new steps in cellular biology in the plant kingdom that nobody else has come close to. No other player is able to grow plant cells at an industrial scale while maintaining the natural composition of the active ingredient,”
If you're an investor looking for a company that’s working to make a fundamental difference to the world; improve people's overall wellness; and has a technology that makes it distinct from it peers, BioHarvest is the company for you.
For more information on BioHarvest Sciences Inc. (CSE: BHSC) please click the request investor info button.
FULL DISCLOSURE: BioHarvest is a client of BTV-Business Television. The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility.