External Innovation

ICL conducts an ongoing search for external innovation initiatives and collaborations with external partners from the academic world, industries, and startups via its Open Innovation programs, ICL Planet Startup Hub and TAMI Labs External Services. \

9.5

Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

External Innovation Focus Areas

As part of its innovation efforts, ICL is focused on external innovative early stage technologies, novel materials, and cost effective production processes that are suitable for its businesses. The areas of focus include next generation fertilizers, food additives, advanced additives, flame retardants, biocides, energy storage solutions and specialty chemicals.

10 Ongoing Projects with Startups

87 Academic/Startups Projects Under Evaluation

ICL’s open innovation projects are at various stages in their development; some projects have just launched the ideation phase, and others have been completed successfully and have become viable products in various business units of ICL. An example of such a project is the development of a unique signaling molecule that improves efficacy against biofilm formation.

ICL Planet Startup Hub

ICL combines novelty with technological innovation

ICL is continuously developing impactful solutions to improve the quality of life for millions globally by leveraging its RD&I infrastructure.

ICL created ICL Planet Startup Hub, a program in which it cultivates, nurtures, and accelerates innovation and technologies in the Agri-food tech ecosystem. We invite entrepreneurs, innovators, and AgTech & FoodTech startups to join forces with us and fulfill their potential. Together we can make an impact on global challenges and disrupt the Agri-food tech ecosystem.

By joining our cutting-edge Agri-Food tech startup hub, there is a partnering opportunity with a trusted name and an industry leader. We at ICL are on a continual quest to create sustainable solutions for the global food, agriculture, and industrial markets that impact the daily lives of millions globally. We seek, invest and grow disruptive companies that can favorably affect the industries we work in and lead, in order to address critical global needs and bring about a positive environmental impact on our collective future.

Through ICL Planet Startup Hub, startups can obtain access to ICL’s resources:

Investment
Pilot with ICL
Expert and executive mentorship
Go to Market
Beta sites and field trials
Access to laboratories and analytical equipment
R&D support
Access to a co-working space
Infrastructure
Global presence and networking

ICL Planet Startup Hub Launches Activity in Brazil

ICL Planet Startup Hub launched activity in Brazil in its quest to invest in startups focused on
new ways to address global challenges in food and agricultural production. These challenges
range from increasing yields and tackling food insecurity, to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.

ICL Planet was created as an innovation catalyst serving early stage, pilot-ready start-ups, as
well as more mature, market-ready start-ups operating within the agriculture and FoodTech
domains. The initiative was driven to advance and nurture game-changing technology
companies active in addressing critical global needs and making a positive and sustainable
environmental impact.

Breakthrough Sustainable Protein Ingredients Startup Arkeon

ICL Planet Startup Hub invested €2.75 million in Arkeon, GmbH. The investment will support
Arkeon’s innovative and sustainable one-step fermentation bioprocess, which creates completely customizable protein ingredients by capturing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and converting it into the 20 proteinogenic amino acids necessary for human nutrition. The resulting alternative proteins are carbon negative and clean-label functional ingredients.

Arkeon’s patented process pioneered the harnessing of carbon dioxide to make protein – through the use of archaea, a highly resilient single-celled microorganism – without genetic engineering. Archaea, part of the microbiota of all organisms, naturally feeds on CO2 and transforms these environmental emissions into nutritious protein – meaning the process is not just sustainable, it is also regenerative.

Arkeon has achieved a major breakthrough, by finding a way to nourish people and revitalize our ecosystems at the same time,”
Hadar Sutovsky, vice president of External Innovation at ICL, and general manager of ICL Planet.

ICL and Lavie Bio Enter Strategic Collaboration to Develop Novel Bio-Stimulant Products

ICL and Evogene Ltd, a leading computational biology company focused on revolutionizing product discovery and development in multiple life-science based industries, began a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement between ICL and Lavie Bio Ltd, a subsidiary of
Evogene.

Lavie Bio is a leading ag-biologicals company focusing on improving food quality, sustainability and agriculture productivity through the introduction of microbiome-based products. Lavie Bio’s unique approach uses Evogene’s tech engine MicroBoost AI, leveraging big-data, advanced artificial intelligence (AI), in combination with a deep understanding of biology.

The collaboration will focus on developing novel bio-timulant products to enrich fertilizer efficiency. Combining Lavie Bio’s ag-biologicals expertise and cutting-edge technology with ICL’s advanced knowledge of fertilizer use, and farmers’ needs is aimed to facilitate the development of new and innovative products for the agriculture industry.

Ag-biologicals are externally applied products derived from natural, biological sources, including microbials, macrobials, biochemicals and minerals, and used to optimize overall plant and soil health. Ag-biological products include bio-stimulants, for maximizing plant yield, quality and durability, as well as bio-pesticides, for pest management.

Together, we have significant potential to develop novel ag-biologicals, which are expected to allow for the improvement of global food quality, agricultural sustainability and productivity, especially in a time of food scarcity, high prices and macroeconomic uncertainty.”
Mr. Ofer Haviv, President & CEO of Evogene and Chairman of the Board of Lavie Bio,

Visit our website to get to know our portfolio companies

Sustainability related projects with academic institutions

Crop Nutrition

We currently have 17 ongoing projects in our open innovation program that focus on sustainability issues for crop nutrition. The following highlights a select few:

ICL is collaborating on a multi-year research project with Dr. Manish Raizda at the University of Guelph on the directed evolution of crop probiotics that improve the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of corn and wheat.
ICL is working with Dr. Tamar Avin-Wittenberg at the Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University, on a project to develop biostimulants products to promote growth via activation of the autophagy mechanism.
ICL is working with Ph.D Dror Minz from the faculty of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences , at ARO–AGRI on a project of characterization of bacterial isolates and their growth conditions which promote metabolite production that increase plant growth.
ICL is working with the University of Cranfield in the United Kingdom to understand the fundamental aspects of water movement in different soils (horizontal/vertical) and the effect of wetting agents on this movement. This is to develop highly efficient water use efficiency products that will allow our customers to grow crops with less water.

Specialty Chemicals

ICL has initiated a research collaboration with Prof. Eric McFarland in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, UCSB, to explore the novel applications of bromine chemistry and bromine-based processes in low-CO2 sustainable processes for chemical and fuel production. The collaboration will explore potential advantages of chemical conversions that use bromine’s unique chemistry in hydrocarbon conversion processes that make it impossible to produce carbon dioxide. Bromine mediated processes may cause hydrogen production to be less costly than current Green Hydrogen processes.

Renewable Energy

ICL is collaborating with the Solar Energy Department of Ben Gurion University on two topics:

Estimation of the albedo effects of salt planes. For this purpose, besides accompanying the experimental setup in Sdom, ICL constructed a field designed especially for albedo measurements.
Measurement of the degradation rate of Photovoltaic panels in the environment of Sdom.

Food

ICL is collaborating on a multi-year research project with Dr. Jochen Weiss at the Institute of Food Science and Biotechnology, University of Hohenheim (Germany), on enhancing techno-functional properties and food applications of sustainable protein sources from single cells such as microalgae and spent-yeast (upcycling approach), through innovative protein modification at molecular level.

Supporting sustainability with a global academic outreach

In October 2021, OCP Group and ICL Group signed a memorandum of understanding to offer scholarships to promote research and academic excellence through the funding of sustainability programs at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The funding will enable both universities to formalize scientific collaboration through the promotion of exchange opportunities for academic and professional staff and students. This partnership will enable scientific and technical experts from the two institutions to consult and collaborate on Sustainability initiatives, and to construct together an agenda of joint lectures, seminars, workshops, and symposia.

There are numerous types of cooperation that impact the future of the world and its inhabitants: Food Security, Ecological Restoration, Climate Smart Agriculture, Water, Climate Change, Remote Sensing, Renewable Energies, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital and Hospitality sector.

Nutrient Uptake

ICL has several ongoing projects to address the challenge of nutrient efficiency since much of the nutrients and micronutrients applied by synthetic fertilizers never make it to the plant, resulting in much waste; both economic and environmental.

ICL is addressing one of the biggest inefficiencies that agriculture faces: the application of fertilizers versus their uptake by plants.

ICL has created a partnership with MIGAL to recover phosphorus from cowshed and/or municipal sludge, to convert it into fertilizer.

ICL and PlantArcBio (PAB) began collaborating in 2018 to use the exogenous application of dsRNA for yield enhancement. This methodology uses the natural biological mechanism that is generally called RNAi (RNA interference), that results in mRNA degradation or inhibition, or a gene’s loss of function. PAB and ICL have submitted a joint patent application that covers genes that increase the yields of canola, soybean, and rice.

The TAMI Haifa Site is the Central R&D Institute of ICL (Israel Chemicals Ltd) and the largest industrial R&D center in Israel. In addition to research, development and scale-up of chemical processes, TAMI provides a variety of services to customers from numerous scientific fields: pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, all branches of chemistry, environmental quality, water, wastewater, effluents and polymers.

6.3

By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally

9.4

By 2030, upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes, with all countries taking action in accordance with their respective capabilities