Plant manager Doug Lindsey looks down into the chopper pump at the Denali Organics LLC plant in Demopolis. The plant, which will start production in a few weeks, will use catfish byproducts and proprietary digestive enzymes to make an environmentally friendly all-natural liquid fertilizer. The truck seen at background left brings in the catfish offal, which then goes into the chopper pump.
Dusty Compton | The Tuscaloosa News
By Patrick Rupinski
Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, November 11, 2011 at 6:05 p.m.
DEMOPOLIS | West Alabama’s farm-raised catfish soon will grace more than just dinner platters. The fish byproducts also will help crops to grow organically in the Middle East, China and Latin America.
That’s the business plan of Denali Organics, a company that has set up a new production plant in Demopolis to take the inedible catfish byproducts — heads, guts, fins, tails and bones — and convert them into a highly concentrated and environmentally friendly liquid fertilizer.
For many years, catfish processing plants paid to truck the waste byproducts, called offal, to landfills. More recently, new technology has made it possible to take the offal and use it to make new products.
Most often, catfish offal has been used to make ingredients for animal feed — something Greensboro catfish farmer Bill Kyser plans to do next year at a plant he is building at his farm.
But Doug Lindsey, the plant manager of Denali Organics, said the company will use a process it developed to convert catfish offal into a virtually odorless, dark brown fertilizer concentrate with the consistency of a thick milkshake.
“Most fish waste from processing plants goes into pet food,” Lindsey said. “But we are defining the marketplace for a new product. We will make an organic fertilizer that is cost-effective for farmers and beneficial for the environment.”
Denali’s fertilizer will return nutrients to soil without releasing the nitrates often found in chemical fertilizers into groundwater and nearby ponds and streams, he said.
For centuries, people who caught and cleaned their own fish discarded the waste by burying it in their gardens. They knew that as it decayed, it renewed and enriched the soil.
Denali’s process recognizes that same principle, Lindsey said.
Scott McCormick, Denali’s chief operating officer, started the company several years ago in Alaska to make biofuels from the offal from Alaskan fisheries, which processed oil-rich fish like salmon, herring and halibut.
Alaska fisheries often are in isolated villages where fuel has to be shipped in over long distances at great cost. By using fishery offal to make biofuel, Denali provided a needed product while getting rid of waste, he said.
The business was successful, but the Alaskan fishing season was short, so McCormick decided to see if Denali’s processes could be used elsewhere and operated year-round.
He looked as far as Australia and Morocco before focusing on the Southeast’s catfish industry and then on West Alabama.
Alabama has about 22,000 acres of fish farms, most of which raise catfish, according to the Alabama Farmers Federation. The state ranks second in the nation to Mississippi in catfish production, harvesting more than 100 million pounds of the fish yearly.
Most of the state’s catfish industry is centered in West Alabama, with Hale and Greene counties leading Alabama’s production.
Catfish processors had year-round supplies of offal, but their fish lacked the rich fish oil found in the Alaskan catch that was better for biofuel, Lindsey said.
But Denali was able to modify its process and use proprietary digestive enzymes to make liquid fertilizer.
It also can custom blend each batch of fertilizer to meet its customers’ nutrient needs, much like commercial fertilizer makers use different blends for different crops and different stages during the growing season.
McCormick said he and his partners sold their three Alaskan biofuel plants and redeployed their assets to catfish country. He said they chose Demopolis for their first plant because it is located near catfish processors and it has access to rail and ports for shipping the fertilizers.
Denali Organics plans to start production early next year and its initial markets will be concentrated overseas.
Companies in China and Libya have shown great interest in the product, Lindsey said.
The plant will have the capacity to make 7,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer daily, or about 2 million gallons yearly. But it will use even more catfish offal. About 9 pounds of catfish offal will yield 1 gallon of the fertilizer concentrate.
The fertilizer will be shipped from the plant in 275-gallon tanks and will be sold for commercial agricultural use.
The liquid fertilizer is highly concentrated. One gallon of fertilizer will be diluted with 100 gallons of water for field application.
Trucks will bring fresh offal from West Alabama catfish processing plants to the Denali plant. The offal will be dumped into a large industrial grinder where water will be added to make a slurry.
The faster the offal is processed, the less time there is for it to decay and produce odors, Lindsey said.
“It will be fresh out of the truck and in 15 to 20 minutes into a sealed tank,” he said.
From the initial storage tank, the slurry will be pumped into processor tanks in which proprietary enzymes will be added to help break down the solids. The mixture will then move to digester tanks, where it will sit for several hours to let the enzymes do their work. The tanks work much like a person’s stomach, Lindsey said.
The Demopolis plant will start with less than 10 employees. It has room to expand and could almost double its production capacity. A key, however, is getting enough catfish offal. The company’s long-term growth could mean opening another plant in Mississippi’s catfish farming areas, or looking beyond catfish for additional offal sources.
Lindsey noted offal from poultry processing plants might be used in Denali’s processes.
Reach Patrick Rupinski atpatrick.rupinski or 205-722-0213.
