MN Corn-Funded Pilot Succeeds: Valerian to Commercialize Its Corn-Based Monomer

Feb 04, 2025

By Jonathan Eisenthal

Advanced materials firm Valerian Materials is creating a new molecule that will be used to make recyclable plastic derived from corn. The young company has taken a significant step towards commercialization, following a pilot plant scale production run funded by a grant from Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council.

The grant allowed Valerian to conduct test production runs in a facility in Augusta, Georgia, where they made use of 300-liter fermentation tanks—a major scale up from earlier bench lab tests made using 5-liter vessels.

Valerian CEO Mike Arbeiter said the company has just concluded an investment round and is ready “to begin producing material at demo scale for customers that are seeking sample material from us.”

He anticipates commercial revenue to flow in from sales in 2026, and he credits the Minnesota Corn investment for helping Valerian assess cost factors and begin to plan their scale-up, so they can be fully competitive with fossil fuel-sourced plastics.

NuvoneÒ, the proprietary monomer innovated by Valerian, could serve as the basic building block for anything from foam used in products like yoga mats and seat cushions, elastomers in things like rubber bands and leggings, the polymers used in plastic cups, or material for athletic shoe soles. Nuvone is derived through a fermentation process using corn. Beyond being recyclable and compostable, one of Nuvone’s most appealing characteristics is that it is regenerative. For instance, when the athletic shoe is worn out, the sole can be chemically recycled to capture back the original Nuvone monomer, for re-use over and over again. There are tremendous implications for the reduction of fossil fuel use, and greenhouse gas emissions.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.