Partnerships

It became very clear that we would have to forge some strategic partnerships if we wanted to be successful in our long-term goal of bringing carbon-based black walnut non-timber products to market. We say’ carbon-based’ because everything we use from the tree is the result of carbon partitioning between roots, trunk, branches, leaves and fruits. From this point of view, placing nut-meats in the market is the end point of an environmental service – carbon sequestered and partitioned into that part of the fruit. There are some very basic practical issues around materials handling that any ‘service manager’ has to address: fruit harvesting, processing, component separation. These are technological issues, and as there was no relevant technology available in the market, we had to identify the means of developing it.