George W. Huber is the Richard L. Antoine Professor in UW–Madison’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and a co-founder of startup companies Annellotech and Pyran. He is also the executive director of the Center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics (CUWP) at UW–Madison. While participating in an expert panel on the state of industry partnerships with the university, he shared some details of how he works with the plastic packaging industry and his experience starting up Pyran in Madison. (His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Flexible Packaging

Professor Huber says, “In Wisconsin, the packaging industry employs 43,000 people. 25,000 of them are employed in the flexible packaging industry. Plastic resins are produced in Texas and shipped via rail to Wisconsin where we use all sorts of technology to make the fancy package that goes in your store. Amcor, the world’s largest packaging producer, makes some of this flexible packaging. Their US headquarters is in Neenah, Wisconsin. Flexible food packaging continues to gain a lot of market share due to its low cost and light weight. Other advantages [to flexible packaging] include your food lasts longer, you can microwave it, you can open it and close it. But there are disadvantages. The main disadvantage is you can’t recycle flexible packages today. The production process also generates lots of waste.

Industry can’t focus on this right now—their profit structure doesn’t allow them to do that—but we can at the university.

“We have developed the technology that uses solvents to recycle the flexible packaging material and have demonstrated it in the laboratory. Amcor and other companies (our center works with 23 different companies) have sent us their waste material, and we’ve sent them back the virgin resins. Amcor has told us, ‘The quality of what you’re making is very good—can you give us 10 tons of it?’ We can’t make 10 tons of it. In the laboratory, we’re trying to make one kilogram of it. It’s taken my graduate student four months to do that.

“We’ve designed a pilot system to scale it up that can produce 25 kilograms an hour that we want to commercialize. We have a location in Green Bay where we will use our technology to take waste from Amcor and other plastic processors, to produce 500 kilograms per hour of pure resins, and send them back to the plastic converters. This closed loop recycling business makes business sense. We now need to demonstrate the technology and bring it to the market.

“Our goal is to get this commercial facility built in 2026 or 2027, so we’re three to five years out. Companies can’t do research that’s five or more years out because they’re looking quarter to quarter. Industry can’t focus on this right now—their profit structure doesn’t allow them to do that—but we can at the university.”

Benefits of Partnering with UW–Madison

“At the university we have a wide range of technical expertise. When we’re trying to pioneer a process nobody has done before, we face lots of technical challenges. Luckily, we can always go to someone in mechanical engineering or chemistry, or other professors in chemical engineering, and they can provide us with expertise about how we can solve some of our technical problems. The students are very close with the industrial partners; we go visit them, they send us material, they do analysis with us and help us provide guidance with them.”

Dr. Huber also talked about his startup experience with Pyran here in Madison. “I had a graduate student who had a technology that I thought had commercial viability. I said ‘Would you be interested in starting a company with me?’ And I told him, ‘You know, maybe it’s best for you to go get a job at Dow Chemical or a large chemical company and do that rather than be an entrepreneur—you know, the entrepreneurs really take a risk.’ He said, ‘Oh, no—I want to start the company.’

When we’re trying to pioneer a process nobody has done before, we face lots of technical challenges. Luckily, we can always go to someone [who] can provide us with expertise.

“The university protected the IP—WARF is very good at that. We went through the WARF accelerator program that gave us some initial funding for technology demonstration. My graduate student stayed on with my lab a year, and I said ‘your job is to make samples; we’re going to form a business plan and start turning this into a business.’ He did a fabulous job with that; now he’s the CTO of Pyran, Kevin Barnett.”

Sources of Funding

In succinctly describing the process of getting funding for Pyran, Huber mentions numerous private, university, state and federal resources available to UW–Madison entrepreneurs. “We went through the D2P [Discovery to Product] program who helped us put together a business plan; we applied for SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] support.  We got support from the CTC [Center for Technology Commercialization] to put together our SBIR proposal. We went through the gBeta program, another accelerator program that told us how to pitch.  The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation gave us some funding.  We got some local investors as angel investors; and now we’re raising our Series B round of funding. We grew the business taking advantage of local expertise.

“The other big advantage we’ve had at Pyran compared to Anellotech is we’re very close. We’re here in Madison, we know all the students—I teach them in my classes, I know the really good ones, and it’s very easy to recruit top quality students to work at Pyran.

“There’s a lot of risk people take when they join the company, because they know you probably have six to 18 months of funding before you need to raise the next round. That stability is not there, but the employees enjoy the risk, and seeing the technology being developed from a laboratory concept to commercial reality.”

The recent meeting of the Board of Regents at Union South included a dynamic, informative panel about the impact of UW–Madison’s business collaborations, moderated by Glenda Gillaspie, Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Chancellor’s intro (36:50): https://youtu.be/-jbL7Qs3W4c?t=2210
Panel begins (39:56): https://youtu.be/-jbL7Qs3W4c?t=2397

Lisa Johnson, CEO of BioForward Wisconsin and a veteran of Wisconsin’s biohealth industry, highlighted how UW–Madison research has helped build state companies into industry leaders. One such example is her former company Novagen, founded in 1989, acquired in 1998, and since evolved into Millipore Sigma. “Industry itself can’t support the broad base of R&D that is required to stay competitive,” she noted. “We are reliant on our universities to support our industry’s R&D efforts that bring life-saving products to market, create jobs, and have substantial economic impact throughout the state.”

The biohealth sector in Wisconsin generates employment for 129,000 people, $32 billion in economic output, and $1.2 billion in state and local taxes, according to BioForward’s 2022 economic impact report.

Dan Kelly, chief underwriting officer at American Family Insurance, highlighted the connection between UW–Madison and the company, which goes back to before its 1927 founding. (Its founder graduated from the UW in 1911.) Today, more than 500 Badger alumni—with majors from A (actuarial science) to Z (zoology)—are American Family employees. In 2015, UW–Madison & AmFam formalized their wide-ranging partnership through a holistic 10-year arrangement that identified key verticals and streamlined contact between the two organizations.

“I think the single point of contact that we have with the Office of Business Engagement (OBE) is really a strong point of our relationship,” says Kelly. “A university is tough to navigate, just like large businesses, and having that single point of contact really is beneficial.”

The 2019 creation of the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute at UW–Madison included a commitment to fund research in data science, a growing need for businesses that want to tailor their offerings to customers’ needs. Kelly notes that AmFam is “excited” to help train future Wisconsin graduates and produce research that allows companies to grow.

GE Healthcare, now a publicly traded company with 6,000 employees in Wisconsin, has a strong relationship with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH), formalized in a 10-plus year research agreement for more than 30 million dollars.

“Dr. Tom Grist [professor and chair of the Department of Radiology], to say it bluntly, is probably one of the most critical members of the GE Healthcare team,” said Tom Westrick, GE Healthcare’s president and chief executive officer of patient care solutions. “His collaboration with our group has provided numerous patient solutions, protocols within our imaging portfolio, that guide radiologists in how to use our equipment and serve as worldwide standards.”

Westrick, who described talent acquisition as a “revolving door” and a “limiter” for GE Healthcare, has experienced UW students as highly educated, hard-working, diverse thinkers and leaders. GE Healthcare hires Wisconsin graduates for highly paid positions because they are well prepared. “Retaining and obtaining talent in this state is one of our most important strategic initiatives,” Westrick said.

As director of UW–Madison’s center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics (CUWP), George W. Huber is innovating new ways to reduce waste and build the economy. He’s also the Richard L. Antoine Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-founder of startup companies Annellotech and Pyran. His campus lab is developing solutions for the world’s largest plastic packaging producer, Amcor, which has US headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Huber is working to scale up technology developed at his lab for recycling flexible plastic packaging and its manufacturing waste. “This kind of closed loop recycling makes business sense; we need to demonstrate the technology and bring it to the market,” said Huber. “Our goal is to get a commercial facility built in 2026-2027, so we’re three to four or five years out. Industry can’t focus on this right now—their profit structure doesn’t allow them to do that—but we can at the university.”

Huber adds, “When we’re trying to pioneer a process nobody has done before, we face challenges. Luckily, we can always go to someone in mechanical engineering or chemistry, or other professors in chemical engineering, and they can provide us with expertise.” (Read more about Dr. Huber’s work.)

Regent Scott Bechtel asked panelists what the state of Wisconsin can do to improve its support for industry-university partnerships, beyond existing government interventions including tax-increment financing at the local level, sales tax rebates, and corporate income tax rebates.

Lisa Johnson suggested increasing R&D tax credits and creating grants to help offset the cost of scarce lab space and other facilities. She also urged state officials to overcome partisanship and work to build awareness of everything Wisconsin offers, to counteract negative ideas that may exist.

“We do have some great products. We have some good programs in Wisconsin; we have good support for entrepreneurs. We have not made that investment in marketing and trying to change that perception.” Johnson concludes, “We need to get, you know, a little more arrogant here.”

UW–Madison has much to offer businesses of all kinds. Contact the Office of Business Engagement to find out more about how we provide seamless access across the university to meet businesses’ strategic needs.