Item 1. Business
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
USE OF FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS IN THIS REPORT
This annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 (the “Annual Report”) contains forward-looking statements that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included in this Annual Report regarding our strategy, future operations, future financial position, future revenues, projected costs, prospects and plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, predictions regarding:
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our business plan;
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the commercial viability of our technology and products incorporating our technology;
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the effects of competitive factors on our technology and products incorporating our technology;
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expenses we will incur in operating our business;
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our liquidity and sufficiency of existing cash;
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the success of our financing plans; and
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the outcome of pending or threatened litigation.
You can identify these and other forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “projects,” “will,” “would” and similar expressions, or the negative of such terms, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements also include the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing statements.
We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events. Although we believe that the expectations underlying our forward-looking statements are reasonable, these expectations may prove to be incorrect, and all of these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. We have included important risks and uncertainties in the cautionary statements included in this Annual Report, particularly the section titled “Risk Factors” incorporated by reference herein. We believe these risks and uncertainties could cause actual results or events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements that we make. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions, projections or expectations prove incorrect, actual results, performance or financial condition may vary materially and adversely from those anticipated, estimated or expected. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments that we may make. We do not assume any obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. In the light of these risks and uncertainties, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this report may not occur, and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this report is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date on which it is made.
When we refer in this report to “BioLargo,” the “company,” “our company,” “we,” “us” and “our,” we mean BioLargo, Inc., and our subsidiaries, including BioLargo Life Technologies, Inc., which holds our intellectual property; ONM Environmental, Inc., which manufactures, markets, sells and distributes our odor and volatile organic compound control products; BioLargo Water Investment Group, Inc., which owns our Canadian subsidiary BioLargo Water, Inc., which develops and markets our AOS water treatment technologies; BioLargo Engineering, Science & Technologies, LLC, a professional engineering services division; and BioLargo Development Corp., which employs and provides benefits to our employees. We also own approximately 45% of Clyra Medical Technologies, Inc. (“Clyra Medical”) as of December 31, 2020, an entity we formed to commercialize our technologies in the medical and dental fields.
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The information contained in this Annual Report is as of December 31, 2020, unless expressly stated otherwise.
Our Business - Innovator and Solution Provider
BioLargo, Inc. invents, develops, and commercializes innovative platform technologies to solve challenging environmental problems like PFAS contamination, advanced water and wastewater treatment, industrial odor and VOC control, air quality control, and infection control. With over thirteen years of extensive R&D, BioLargo holds a wide array of issued patents, maintains a robust pipeline of products, and provides full-service environmental engineering. Our peer-reviewed scientific approach allows us to invent or acquire novel technologies and develop them to maturity through our operating subsidiaries. With a keen emphasis on collaborations with academic, municipal, and commercial organizations and associations, BioLargo has proven itself with over 80 awarded grants and numerous pilot projects. We monetize through direct sales, recurring service contracts, licensing agreements, strategic joint venture formation and/or the sale of the IP.
In the last year, we developed and refined new technologies that are now ready for commercial trials (see Development of AEC to Combat PFAS Crisis , and New Technology – Mineral Extraction) , formalized strategic relationships to expand sales and revenues (see South Korean Joint Venture , and Full Service Environmental Engineering ), arranged for demonstration pilot projects for our AOS water treatment system (see Sunworks Farm Pilot and Municipal Wastewater Treatment Pilot – Montreal ), increased revenues, including those of our flagship product, CupriDyne Clean (see Results of Operations), and began the process to register our CupriDyne technology with the EPA to make advanced sanitization and disinfection claims, all the while we and the world struggled through the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several of our technologies are commercially available and are advancing as disrupters in their respective markets.
Formula for Success: Technology, Talent and Purpose
Technology
The company has continually advanced its robust portfolio of technologies since the first acquisition of early iterations of the BioLargo technology in the spring of 2007. Our innovations have primarily been developed through the company’s internal resources, and some through acquisition. These include patents, patents pending and trade secrets that include solutions for:
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PFAS removal
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SARS-CoV-2 solutions
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Air quality controls and systems including odor and VOC control
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Water decontamination
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Micro-pollutant destruction and removal
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Legionella detection and water treatment solutions
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Mineral processing
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Infection control
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Wound management
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Regenerative tissue therapy
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Disinfection
Talent
We have steadily grown our team to 27 team members and numerous other part-time consultants, including highly qualified PhDs, engineers, MDs and medical professionals, construction professionals, field service technicians, innovators, sales marketing specialists, entrepreneurial and executive leadership.
Purpose
Our mission to make life better centers our company on serving others with integrity, knowledge, technology, and solutions that protect the environment, improve quality of life, and protect lives. We are unique in our ability to tailor our offerings to serve our customers with proven expertise, proven technology and, if needed, we often have the ability to develop new technical solutions to meet our customer’s needs.
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Development of AEC to Combat PFAS Crisis
Our engineers at BLEST have developed a novel water treatment system, called the AEC (Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator), that removes per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions. PFAS chemicals can cause cancer, infertility, asthma, and other health problems in human beings, are present in a vast range of manufactured goods, common household products (e.g., cleaning products, cookware), and electronics, and contaminate drinking water in unsafe levels all over the globe. Governments and industry are actively seeking less expensive technologies and processes to eliminate PFAS from groundwater and drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has made finding an economical solution a priority, announcing in February 2021 final regulatory determinations on the safe maximum levels of PFAS in drinking water, paving the way for regulating the chemicals through the Safe Drinking Water Act and creating a regulatory environment where municipalities will be required to install technologies that help remove PFAS from their drinking water supplies prior to distribution.
Our AEC treatment system has been proven in lab-scale studies to meet or exceed the performance of current incumbent solutions (such as carbon-filtration and reverse osmosis) while consuming as little as $0.30 in electrical costs per 1,000 gallons treated. And most significantly, the AEC produces substantially less waste than carbon-filtration and reverse osmosis systems, creating far less of a disposal liability. We believe testing will show that total operating costs of the AEC represent a significant potential cost savings compared to reverse osmosis and carbon sequestration technologies.
PFAS water contamination is a significant problem worldwide. In the United States, PFAS chemicals have been estimated to be present in the blood of 98% of the population, and have been linked to a plethora of health problems including high cholesterol, liver dysfunction, immune disorders and various cancers. Over 1,400 communities so far in the U.S. have been proven to be affected by PFAS water contamination. In Orange County, California, where our corporate offices are located, more than 40 drinking water wells have been taken out of service due to PFAS contamination, and county officials estimate that treating the wells using existing technologies will cost more than $200 million in capital costs and more than $400 million in maintenance and operating costs. When PFAS-laden carbon is incinerated, not only does it produce vast volumes of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, but new evidence suggests volatile fluorochemicals like carbon tetrafluoride, hexafluoroethane, and hydrogen fluoride are released into the air which may have serious human health impacts on adjacent communities. Our technology does not require incineration.
We are in the final stages of refining the AEC technology prior to commercial sales. We have received interest in the system from multiple municipal water agencies. We have completed third-party testing to validate the efficacy of the system. We have designed a modular system that can theoretically handle large projects. We are constructing a pilot unit for testing at an ongoing project at a municipal water treatment plant in Canada (see Wastewater Treatment Pilot – Montreal, below). We are hopeful to start multiple pre-commercial trials in the U.S. by the end of summer.
Broadly speaking, there are three main markets for PFAS water treatment in the U.S., each of which we intend to address in the coming years. The first is municipal water treatment – that is water which needs treatment for PFAS before it can be distributed to the public or water that must be treated from a wastewater treatment plant. Southern California, Michigan and Wisconsin may be hotbeds for this market, as the states have adopted stringent regulations on PFAS limits in drinking water and wastewater, and significant initiatives have begun to implement systems to address the problem. The second market is military bases, where the use of PFAS-containing fire-fighting foam has contaminated the soil and groundwater. These sites are numerous and have significant groundwater and soil contamination problems which regulators are likely to require remediation for in the coming years. The third market is treatment for water intake or outfalls of industrial facilities that use PFAS compounds in manufacturing and other industrial processes. Our first pilot projects are in municipal water treatment. As our engineers are already providing environmental engineering services on U.S. Airforce bases, we believe that work may lead to sales in that arena.
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COVID-19 Response and Related Business Development
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, and because of our technology portfolio’s specialty focus on nature’s best disinfectant, iodine, at the outset of the pandemic we sponsored research with one of the country’s leading researchers in the study of pandemic diseases, Dr. Slobodan Paessler. Located at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, his laboratory confirmed that our CupriDyne technology inactivated the Coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Following this initial study, the laboratory of Dr. Paessler conducted a follow-up study whereby a more concentrated CupriDyne formula (See CupriDyne Plus , below) was tested against the COVID-19 virus. In this study, the CupriDyne Plus completely inactivated SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus) in 10 minutes – roughly the same performance observed with highly concentrated bleach. As a consequence of these highly promising results, we are seeking the regulatory approvals to sell a CupriDyne based product to combat the pandemic (see EPA Registration of CupriDyne Plus , below).
ONM Environmental - Industrial Odor and VOC Solutions
In 2020, we changed the name of our odor control subsidiary Odor-No-More, Inc., to ONM Environmental, Inc., to reflect the expansion of its work from odor control sales to more robust environmental services. Its flagship product, CupriDyne® Clean, reduces and eliminates tough odors and volatile organic compounds (“VOCs”) in various industrial settings. CupriDyne Clean is delivered through misting systems, sprayers, water trucks and similar water delivery systems designed, manufactured and installed by ONM. We believe the product is the number-one performing odor-control product in the market, and that it offers substantial savings to our customers compared with competing products. In response to customer demand for expanded services, ONM now holds General, Electrical, Plumbing and Low Voltage contractor licenses issued by the California Contractors State License Board, and offers a menu of services to landfills, transfer stations, wastewater treatment facilities as well as facilities in non-waste related industries. These services include engineering design, construction, installation, ongoing maintenance and on-site support services to assist our clients in the implementation and continued use of the various systems that deliver our liquid products in the field (such as misting systems).
Our customer base for our odor and VOC business was expanding prior to the COVID-19 crisis and we expect it to continue doing so as the United States recovers from the pandemic. We have been and expect to continue selling product to the largest solid waste handling companies in the country. Very recently, some of the capital projects that ONM previously had on hold due to logistical limitations imposed by the pandemic have begun to come back online, with decision-makers from these clients requesting that ONM resume work on these projects. We also have a number of potential partners actively engaged in commercial trials around the globe and we are actively in discussion with a number of groups to leverage our commercial focus through distribution partnerships.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, ONM Environmental acquired a deodorizing and sanitizing technology, called EcoMist®, that helps raise the customer care bar for solid waste collectors to treat all types of waste receptacles in real time during pick up. EcoMist® is a device installed directly onto any waste collection vehicle that automatically sprays odor control products and/or sanitizer into refuse bins or dumpsters during the waste collection process. ONM plans to test market the product directly with its major solid waste handling customers by packaging it with CupriDyne Clean. A video showing EcoMist® in operation can be viewed here: https://www.biolargo.com/ecomist-video . EcoMist® is easy to install and use – it works “out-of-the-box”, allowing customers to install the system themselves, and will thus not require a significant investment in logistics and servicing to support sales. ONM’s acquisition of EcoMist® is part of its strategy to grow revenues of its air quality control division through chemistry deployment systems that lead to more scalable sales of CupriDyne Clean. It also helps ensure ONM can provide the largest waste handling companies in the country with a broad range of tools to solve their odor and VOC control challenges in all facets of their business. ONM’s only obligation under the acquisition agreement is a 10% royalty on EcoMist® system sales.
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Cannabis Industry
In 2019, we granted non-exclusive rights to Mabre Systems to sell our CupriDyne Clean product to the Cannabis industry under a private-label brand. Testing shows that CupriDyne Clean eliminates the odors emitted by Cannabis grow and production facilities. We have been installing CupriDyne Clean delivery misting systems for Mabre’s customers, and have over 20 facilities regularly buying product from our distributor. Mabre has expressed an intent to launch a consumer odor product based on CupriDyne Clean in the near future.
South Korean Joint Venture
On February 12, 2020, we executed a “Joint Venture Framework Agreement” with a leading wastewater treatment solution provider based in South Korea (BKT Co. Ltd., “BKT”), to create a South Korean entity that would manufacture odor and VOC control products based on our CupriDyne Clean products. We received a $350,000 investment from BKT and issued 1,593,087 shares of our common stock, and invested $100,000 into the joint venture for a 40% ownership share. BKT and its U.S. based subsidiary invested $150,000 into the joint venture for the remaining 60% ownership share. Although the joint venture established manufacturing and is marketing the product, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the expected growth of the company. In late 2020, the joint venture (under the name Odin) established corporate offices at the Korea Water Cluster, which is a new world-renowned water innovation campus located in Daegu, South Korea, a center for industrial innovation in Asia. The move positions Odin well to interface with other innovators in the water treatment sector as well as with industry leaders who may need Odin’s products for air quality control.
Full Service Environmental Engineering
Our subsidiary BioLargo Engineering, Science & Technologies, LLC (“BLEST”) offers full service environmental engineering to third parties and provides engineering support services to our internal teams to accelerate the commercialization of our technologies. Its website is found at www.BioLargoEngineering.com.
BLEST focuses its efforts in three areas:
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providing engineering services to third-party clients;
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supporting internal product development and business units’ services to customers (e.g., the AOS); and
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advancing their own technical innovations such as the AEC.
The subsidiary is located in Oak Ridge (a suburb of Knoxville, Tennessee), and employs seven scientists and engineers who collectively worked together for almost 30 years and experience in diverse engineering fields. The team is led by Randall Moore, who served as Manager of Operations for Consulting and Engineering for the Knoxville office of CB&I Environmental & Infrastructure and was formerly a leader at The Shaw Group, Inc., a Fortune 500 global engineering firm. The other team members are also former employees of CB&I and Shaw. The team is highly experienced across multiple industries and they are considered experts in their respective fields, including chemical engineering, wastewater treatment (including design, operations, data gathering and data evaluation), process safety, energy efficiency, air pollution, design and control, technology evaluation, technology integration, air quality management & testing, engineering management, permitting, industrial hygiene, applied research and development, air testing, environmental permitting, HAZOP review, chemical processing, thermal design, computational fluid dynamics, mechanical engineering, mechanical design, NEPDES permitting, RCRA/TSCA compliance and permitting, project management, storm water design & permitting, computer assisted design (CAD), bench chemistry, continuous emission monitoring system operator, data handling and evaluation and decommissioning and decontamination of radiological and chemical contaminated facilities.
BLEST established a partnership with Garratt-Callahan, a national industrial water treatment company, to develop and sell custom wastewater treatment equipment to recycle water from commercial facilities. They are also working with them to expand sales of other BioLargo products.
New Technology – Mineral Extraction
BLEST developed a proprietary and patent-pending process to extract valuable minerals from certain types of industrial waste. As a result of this invention, a client is planning a substantial long-term project expected to generate over $1B in revenues, while avoiding expensive soil remediation costs. As the client’s engineering services provider, and developer of the extraction technology, BLEST is in discussions with the client to secure its role as the project manager and/or lead engineer. We believe there are multiple similarly situated industrial waste sites across the country and around the world that would benefit from our newly developed process, and, as resources permit, we intend to explore these opportunities.
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BioLargo Water and the Advanced Oxidation System – AOS
BioLargo Water is our wholly owned subsidiary located on campus at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, that developed and is commercializing our Advanced Oxidation System (AOS). The AOS is our patented water treatment device that generates a series of highly oxidative species of iodine and other molecules that, because of its proprietary configuration and inner constituents, allow it to eliminate pathogenic organisms and organic contaminants as water passes through the device. The key value proposition of the AOS is its ability to eliminate a wide variety of contaminants with high performance while consuming extremely low levels of input electricity and extremely low levels of chemistry inputs – a trait made possible by the complex set of highly oxidative iodine compounds generated within the AOS reactor. Our proof-of-concept studies and case studies have generated results that project the AOS will be more cost- and energy-efficient than commonly used advanced water treatment technologies such as UV, electro-chlorination, and ozonation. This value proposition may enable advanced water treatment in applications where it otherwise would have been prohibitively costly. Secondly, the AOS has been proven effective against certain soluble organic molecules, pharmaceuticals and a host of other micropollutants which are difficult to treat with other conventional tertiary water treatment technologies like UV. This characteristic of the AOS may offer a significant incentive for prospective customers to choose this technology over established incumbents because of the need in certain contexts to address these hard-to-treat contaminants, in addition to traditional targets of tertiary treatment like microorganisms.
Sunworks Farm Pilot
Our efforts to establish our first commercial pilot for the AOS system, at a poultry and livestock farm in Alberta, Canada, is progressing as planned. We expect to have installed a fully functional treatment train featuring our AOS water system at the client’s farm in the second quarter of 2021. When complete, the system will be the first of its kind to allow for the complete reuse of this industrial wastewater, allowing the client to significantly save on water costs and expand production. The project budget of approximately $600,000 will be funded in part by government grants and in part by the client. We expect the project to be successful, and to set a precedent for the AOS and BioLargo’s total water treatment solutions for future customers seeking water reuse, or even “zero liquid discharge” systems, and we believe will lead to follow-up projects with customers who follow Sunworks’ example.
Municipal Wastewater Treatment Pilot - Montreal
BioLargo Water is working on a second commercial-scale AOS demonstration pilot, to be installed at a municipal wastewater treatment facility near Montreal, Quebec, to be run in partnership with acclaimed water experts at the Centre des Technologies de L’Eau (CTE). BLEST engineers have already built and delivered this commercial-scale AOS unit to the site near Montreal, and the project is expected to begin collecting important data throughout the first quarter of 2021. The purpose of the project is to assess the AOS (and eventually, an AEC unit to be added on to the treatment train) as effective, cost-efficient, and complementary solutions for disinfecting and eliminating a broad range of recalcitrant contaminants from municipal wastewater in an operating wastewater treatment plant. It is our belief that once these pre-commercial pilots have concluded with the AOS, our ability to entice major water industry players to partner with BioLargo Water to accelerate market adoption of the AOS will be increased dramatically.
In late 2019, BioLargo Water commenced a Regulation Crowdfunding offering in an attempt to raise internal capital to fund its operations. In 2020, the platform on which the offering was being marketed paused its operations, and we elected to place the effort on hold until such time as the platform was more well established. We continue to monitor and reevaluate the opportunity to utilize this funding source.
Clyra Medical Technologies
Clyra Medical Technologies, Inc. is our partially owned subsidiary creating medical products based on our technology.
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When the COVID-19 crisis began, we immediately responded by supporting the team at Clyra Medical to develop a product that could help frontline workers battle the pandemic. In response, they developed Clyraguard Personal Protection Spray. Testing and peer-reviewed published data confirmed that Clyraguard inactivates the SARS CoV-2 coronavirus. The product was registered with the FDA as a Class I general purpose disinfectant, and initially sales were brisk. After consultation with legal and regulatory advisors, we decided that that products claims required an EPA registration, and sales were stopped. We are actively working on this now (see CupriDyne Plus , below).
Clyra is preparing to launch a prescription-only product to be used by orthopedic surgeons to reduce infections in knee and hip replacement surgeries.
CupriDyne Plus
At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we set out to revisit and modify the CupriDyne technology with the goal of creating a powerful yet comparatively safer, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly disinfectant and/or surface sanitizer. The result of this redevelopment process, which involved over 500 hours by our engineers and scientists, was “CupriDyne Plus”, a product that delivers a potent concentration of the active ingredient iodine (I2) as compared to traditional CupriDyne based formulations, meaning it can achieve much faster results.
EPA Registration of CupriDyne Plus
We are actively working to obtain an EPA registration for CupriDyne Plus for a number of different applications. CupriDyne Plus has the potential to offer a safer, more environmentally friendly alternative to bleach and other common antimicrobials for applications like hard surface disinfection, sanitization of non-porous non-food contact surfaces, disinfection of air, textiles, and more. Our scientists have conducted many of the tests required for EPA registration. Based on our extensive work, we are confident it meets the minimum performance requirements required for EPA registration as a disinfectant and/or surface sanitizer. We have met with and presented data to officials at the EPA for the purpose of refining our product and determining additional data requirements, and have retained a firm specializing in EPA registration work to help us through the process. While we are not able to predict the results of any EPA application we submit, or the time it will take to complete the process, we believe the market opportunities are large, with the U.S. market for surface disinfectants coming in at greater than $3.4 billion (https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/surface-disinfectant-market).
Conclusion
BioLargo has advanced its technologies and infrastructure to achieve a critical mass to capitalize on its commercial efforts and have a positive impact around the world with clean water, clean air, and infection control solutions. The company presents a scalable business model that targets high-impact cleantech market opportunities. We leverage our considerable scientific, engineering, and entrepreneurial talent to monetize our technologies and ensure high-quality customer service and increased revenue potential. We seek to unlock the value of our portfolio of disruptive technologies to advance our mission to “make life better” and continue creating shareholder value.
Intellectual Property
We have 21 patents issued, including 19 in the United States, and multiple pending. We believe these patents provide a foundation from which to continue building our patent portfolio, and we believe that our technology is sufficiently useful and novel that we have a reasonable basis upon which to rely on our patent protections. We also rely on trade secrets and technical know-how to establish and maintain additional protection of our intellectual property. As our capital resources permit, we expect to expand our patent protection as we continue to refine our inventions as well as make new discoveries. See the detailed discussion below of our patent portfolio.
We regard our intellectual property as critical to our ultimate success. Our goal is to obtain, maintain and enforce patent protection for our products and technologies in geographic areas of commercial interest and to protect our trade secrets and proprietary information through laws and contractual arrangements.
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Our Chief Science Officer, Mr. Kenneth R. Code, has been involved in the research and development of the technology since 1997. He has participated in the Canadian Federal Scientific Research and Experimental Development program, and he was instrumental in the discovery, preparation and filing of the first technology patents. He has worked with manufacturers, distributors and suppliers in a wide variety of industries to gain a full appreciation of the potential applications and the methodologies applicable to our technology for their manufacture and performance. He continues to research methods and applications to continue to expand the potential uses of our technology as well as work to uncover new discoveries that may provide additional commercial applications to help solve real world problems in the field of disinfection.
We incurred approximately $1,300,000 in expense related to our research and development activities in 2020, a decrease of approximately $150,000 compared with the prior year. We increased research and development to develop products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and decreased in other areas as our water treatment technologies have neared commercialization.
We believe that our suite of intellectual property covers the presently targeted major areas of focus for our licensing strategy. The description of our intellectual property, at present, is as follows:
U.S. Patents
● U.S. Patent 10,238,990, issued on March 26, 2019, and 10,051,866, issued on August 21, 2018, which protect our AOS system.
● U.S. Patent 10,046,078, issued on August 14, 2018, relating to the misting systems that eliminate odors in waste transfer stations, landfills, and other waste handling facilities.
● U.S. Patent 9,883,653 issued on February 8, 2018, which encompasses a litter composition used in the absorption of animal wastes.
● US Patent 9,414,601 granted August 16, 2016, relating to the use of an article for application to a surface to provide antimicrobial and/or anti-odor activity. At least one of the reagents is coated with a water-soluble, water dispersible or water-penetrable covering that prevents ambient conditions of 50% relative humidity at 25ºC from causing more than 10% of the total reagents exposed to the ambient conditions from reacting in a twenty-four hour period.
● U.S. Patent 8,846,067, issued on September 30, 2014, which encompasses a method of treating a wound or burn on tissue to reduce microbe growth about a wound comprising applying an antimicrobial composition to the wound or burn on tissue using a proprietary stable iodine gel or liquid. This patent covers our technology as used in products being developed by our subsidiary, Clyra Medical Technologies.
● U.S. Patent 8,757,253, issued on June 24, 2014, relating to the moderation of oil extraction waste environments.
● U.S. Patent 8,734,559, issued on May 27, 2014, relating to the moderation of animal waste environments.
● U.S. Patent 8,679,515 issued on March 25, 2014, titled “Activated Carbon Associated with Alkaline or Alkali Iodide,” which provides protection for our BioLargo® AOS filter.
● U.S. Patent 8,642,057, issued on February 14, 2014, titled “Antimicrobial and Antiodor Solutions and Delivery Systems,” relating to our liquid antimicrobial solutions, including our gels, sprays and liquids imbedded into wipes and other substrates.
● U.S. Patent 8,574,610, issued on November 5, 2013, relating to flowable powder compositions, including our cat litter additive.
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● U.S. Patent 8,257,749, issued on September 4, 2012, relating to the use of our technology as protection of against antimicrobial activity in environments that need to be protected or cleansed of microbial or chemical material. These environments include closed and open environments and absorbent sheet materials that exhibit stability until activated by aqueous environments. The field also includes novel particle technology, coating technology or micro-encapsulation technology to control the stability of chemicals that may be used to kill or inhibit the growth of microbes to water vapor or humidity for such applications.
● U.S. Patent 8,226,964, issued on July 24, 2012, relating to use of our technology as a treatment of residue, deposits or coatings within large liquid carrying structures such as pipes, drains, ducts, conduits, run-offs, tunnels and the like, using iodine, delivered in a variety of physical forms and methods, including using its action to physically disrupt coatings. The iodine’s disruptive activity may be combined with other physical removal systems such as pigging, scraping, tunneling, etching or grooving systems or the like.
● U.S. Patent 8,021,610, issued on September 20, 2011, titled “System providing antimicrobial activity to an environment,” relating to the reduction of microbial content in a land mass. Related to this patent are patents held in Canada and the European Union.
● U.S. Patent 7,943,158, issued on May 17, 2011, titled “Absorbent systems providing antimicrobial activity,” relating to the reduction of microbial content by providing molecular iodine to stabilized reagents.
● U.S. Patent 7,867,510, issued on January 11, 2011, titled “Material having antimicrobial activity when wet,” relating to articles for delivering stable iodine-generating compositions.
Pending Patent Applications
Most recently, we filed two patent applications in the United States for our advanced wound care formulas. The inventions in these applications form the basis for the work at Clyra Medical and the products for which that subsidiary intends to seek FDA approval. In addition to these applications, we have filed patent applications in multiple foreign countries, including the European Union, pursuant to the PCT, and other provisional applications.
Subject to adequate financing, we intend to continue to expand and enhance our suite of intellectual property through ongoing focus on product development, new intellectual property development and patent applications, and further third-party testing and validations for specific areas of focus for commercial exploitation. We currently anticipate that additional patent applications will be filed during the next 12 months with the USPTO and the PCT, although we are uncertain of the cost of such patent filings, which will depend upon the number of such applications prepared and filed. The expense associated with seeking patent rights in multiple foreign countries is expensive and will require substantial ongoing capital resources. However, we cannot give any assurance that adequate capital will be available. Without adequate capital resources, we will be forced to abandon patent applications and irrevocably lose rights to our technologies.
Our Company
BioLargo, Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of the state of Delaware. Our common stock is quoted on the OTC Markets OTCQB “Venture Marketplace” under the trading symbol “BLGO”.
Our corporate offices are located at 14921 Chestnut St., Westminster, California 92683. We have a research facility and offices at the University of Alberta in Canada, and our engineering team is located at 105 Fordham Road in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Our telephone number is (888) 400-2863. We operate through multiple wholly-owned subsidiary entities, including: BioLargo Life Technologies, Inc., to hold our intellectual property; ONM Environmental, Inc., to manufacture, market, sell and distribute our odor control products; BioLargo Water Investment Group, Inc., which is the sole owner of a Canadian subsidiary, BioLargo Water, Inc., for our Canadian research and development and AOS commercialization operations; BioLargo Development Corp., through which our employees are employed; and BioLargo Engineering, Science & Technologies, LLC, our full service engineering firm in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Additionally, we own 45% of Clyra Medical Technologies, Inc., formed to develop and market medical products based on our technology.
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Our principal corporate website is www.BioLargo.com . We also maintain a blog at www.BioLargo.blogspot.com . Websites concerning our subsidiaries are www.ONMEnvironmental.com , www.CupriDyne.com , www.ClyraMedical.com , www.BioLargoWater.com , and www.BioLargoEngineering.com . The information on our websites and blog are not, and shall not be deemed to be, a part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Executive Officers
As of December 31, 2020, and as the date of this report, our executive officers were:
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Dennis P. Calvert: Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman of the Board
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Charles K. Dargan II: Chief Financial Officer
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Joseph L. Provenzano: Corporate Secretary and Vice President of Operations
Our operational subsidiaries are led by:
Subsidiary
President
ONM Environmental, Inc.
Joseph L. Provenzano
BioLargo Engineering, Science & Technologies, LLC
Randall Moore
BioLargo Water, Inc. (Canada)
Richard Smith
Clyra Medical Technologies, Inc.
Steven V. Harrison
Employees
As of December 31, 2020, we had 27 full time employees. Our employees including professional engineers, masters of engineering, and PhDs, as well as sales, support and administrative personnel. We also utilize consultants and independent contractors on an as-needed basis who provide certain specified services, such as professional engineers used from time to time by our engineering group in Tennessee.
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Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.