We invested in Phoenix Biocomposites over a decade ago.
They folded, and re emerged with us still having a bit of investment in them.
They folded, and were renamed Environ Biocomposites .
They folded twice I think.
Now it is called Agristrand since mid 2012.
They folded, and as far as I can tell, owe a bunch and are in default and are looking, for the past year, for the next investor/buyer of what is there.
It was a pretty neat idea, but never funded or built or marketed right, and never went. The original idea was to take soybeans and new paper and combine them into some neat looking pressed decorative wood panels. They never ever got the process quite right, and they never had their market matched to the size of their manufacturing plant.
So they reached out into many different ideas, from simple particle board made of soybean straw, to plastic panels that were decorative, to many other 'quick ideas' to try to generate some revenue. Too little too late, not enough money to carry through any of the ideas.
In case anyone is interested, I will put up the latest news I can find of them. An offer for anyone to invest in the plant and restart it.
My investment was gone three bankruptcies ago, so it doesn't matter to me if anyone wants to run with it.
I still think it was a cool concept, it just never had the right process to move forward. Early on they got involved in several issues, perhaps they weren't savy enough, or were trying to pull a fast one, or were played for fools by a city/county politics, they had a building finalized and a lot invested in that site and the city then pulled the rug out from under them, that was a blow to a new deal that had no ongoing business to generate cash bu had to start over and waste another 18 months getting a plant up. they got caught in the housing deal as well, high projections on what building materials were bringing, and then lumber and fancy panels crashed to all time lows.
Paul
Phoenix Environ Agristrand