We had a fascinating conversation with Miguel Calatayud, CEO of iwi life, joins us in a mind-blowing segment about algae. This supercrop can be the solution to one of the biggest problems our world is facing.
Please excuse any typos in this hasty transcript.
Matt Register: Welcome back to Texas Business Radio. Texasbusinessradio.com is the website. 844-814-8144 is our 24 hour call line. Get your calls in, we’re going to get the experts in here to get you the answers to those questions. Jay Curry had to step out for a minute. He’s going to join us here shortly. I’m your host Matt Register and we’re talking about food. Everybody loves food, everybody needs food. Food is a big industry. Food has, drives a lot of the economy and especially here in Texas. There’s some really exciting stuff going on around our food and this segment is no different. You’re really going to enjoy this. We have Miguel Calatayud…
Miguel Calatayud: Calatayud.
Matt Register: Calatayud, I got that correct. Wonderful. Miguel is the CEO of Qualitas Health, with an absolutely fascinating story about a brand new industry that is here in Texas. I think you’re really going to enjoy. Miguel Welcome to the show, Sir.
Miguel Calatayud: Thank you very much Matt. And thank you very much for everybody to give me the chance to talk a little bit about us.
Matt Register: Well, I tell you what, tell me a little bit about Qualitas Health. Because and I got to be honest with you, we started talking and you were telling me about some of the algae that you guys were growing. It certainly didn’t make me hungry but this is going to change the food business as we know it in the world. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: So, very quickly about me and just for everybody to understand why this is so exciting. I was born in Spain and I was lucky to run a food company with my mentor, Javier Viertel, the owner of Viertel. And then I came to the states to do the same thing here. By the time I left, everyday we were growing about 650 million pounds of vegetables. So I’m very familiar with agriculture, worldwide, global company and I really wanted to do something different. I really wanted to participate in a project that would be a breakthrough in the food and nutrition industry. I’m very involved in the health and wellness. And I’m really excited about helping people to eat better and solve some of their nutrition problems that is in the world. And Qualitas was the way to do it. What we do is we grow algae in the desert of Texas; Millennium, Imperial and also in New Mexico and we will keep expanding this all over the world. And what we are basically doing is we are extracting omega 3 and we are attracting protein out of the algae. Which is, after knowing crops, I used to grow peas, for example. Which is what people take as a protein substitute to meat.
Matt Register: Sure.
Miguel Calatayud: And our productivity is about 300 times more than peas, in terms of production of essential amino acids. Which means that our hundred and fifty acres that we currently have on production. We are probably the biggest algae producers in the world. But our 150 acres, which doesn’t sound much.
Matt Register: Sure.
Miguel Calatayud: In, you know, in terms of beans or corn, equals to 45,000 acres of peas in production of essential amino acid. So it is really a breakthrough in the agricultural business, in the food business.
Matt Register: Well, I tell you what, there’s a few, several things in that statement that are quite amazing. OK. One of them is, you’re able to grow this algae in lamd that is otherwise unfarmable. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: Yes.
Matt Register: In the middle of the desert. Correct?
Miguel Calatayud: Absolutely.
Matt Register: You’re able to use brackish water that is unusable for agriculture any way outside of this. Correct?
Miguel Calatayud: Absolutely.
Matt Register: And we were talking during the break. Tell me a little bit about the omega 3. Because, you know, I know people that take the omega 3 oils and there’s a lot of benefits to it. But the fish and shrimp and things that, that most omega 3 is extracted from. Their not the ones that make it. Correct?
Miguel Calatayud: So, this is absolutely right. Many people are familiar with fish oil and krill oil. Which is the, you know, natural source for many people of Omega 3’s. What people don’t know is that fish and krill do not generate omega 3. It is the algae that they eat through their lives. What provides them with the omega 3. So we go directly to the source and we keep the middle fish literally. Right?
Matt Register: I got it. So, so, the omega 3 is being produced by the algae. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: Yes. And the advantage of us is, you know we have an amazing value proposition because we are a hundred percent vegan. Which is, very few can say that. We have full traceability because we are vertically integrated and we control the whole, the whole process. We have the highest bio-availability, which is the absorption rate by the human body, in the whole Omega 3 industry. Because we go directly to the source and we are born and raised in Texas. That is a value proposition. But in addition to that, we have a beautiful, noble cause. We are the new farmers of Texas. We grow algae in the desert. We use nonfarmable land. We use brackish water. We use the sun as the main source of energy and we are 100 percent sustainable and scale-able. Which is, business wise, very interesting to me.
Matt Register: It’s all very interesting. Right? One of the things that we spoke about a minute ago was the, the growth in the human population and the need to increase the amount of protein we produce and essentially the amount of calories. I mean you have more people, you have to produce more calories. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: Yes.
Matt Register: And at some point we’re running out of prime farmland. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: Yes.
Matt Register: Talk to me a little bit about the byproduct. After, after you get done extracting the omega 3’s. That leaves you with a great big pile of protein. Right?
Miguel Calatayud: So, our strain is very unique and our technology also. We have a very unique team, our, I will talk later about the team. We have the best team in the industry, in my opinion. I’m really blessed to be able to work with this group of professionals. But what we do is, over 40 percent of our biomass is pure protein and this protein is very unique also. Because if you compare it with pea protein or other proteins, our protein has the whole essential amino acid chain on it. Which is a very balanced and very high quality protein, comparable to meat or anything else. In addition to that our productivity, as I mentioned before we are 300 times more productive than peas, for example. So that is something that is necessary in this world. We are going to go from seven and a half billion people to 10 billion people by 2050. That means that we need to produce about… because we are eating more and better. We need to produce about 70, 7 0, 70 percent more protein and nutrients in the next 30 years. The seas are hurting, there’s not enough farmable land, there’s not enough fresh water. If you have to choose between a conventional crop and our super crop, you would choose our super crop. Right? But you don’t need to choose, because you can keep growing your normal crop in the farmable land. And we will be able to use non-farmable land and the brackish as water to do this. So this is a breakthrough.
Matt Register: It’s an addition, not a replacement…
Miguel Calatayud: Absolutely
Matt Register: Of that. This is, it sounds to me like this solves a whole lot of problems. Now, you guys have some unique challenges ahead of you. Right? This is, your supplement has gone through all the FDA process and everything else. You have an education to do with people. Right? I mean, this is going to take some time to take off.
Miguel Calatayud: So, we are really, well, it’s already taking, taking off. We are really launching brand with HEB. Almega PL is exclusively in HEB. You can find it in older stores of HEB. HEB is an amazing partner, by the way.
Matt Register: Sure.
Miguel Calatayud: Texas, very well handle company and very professional. So we like this brand. The customers are responding amazingly to that. Because, as we said, it’s the perfect quality product. It’s the best omega 3’s, that you can buy in the market. It is fully sustainable and is coming from Texas. So people are very excited. What we are planning to do is, we will go national by the end of this year with different brands. We are launching a live brand and we are planning to also go international in Q4 or Q1, starting in Australia and Japan. So we have a lot to do, a lot of work to do.
Matt Register: Sure.
Miguel Calatayud: Education awareness, it’s a very important part of what we need to do in the coming months. But we have, as I said, the best partners and the best team in order to make it happen.
Matt Register: Well, it’s remarkable and there’s a tremendous amount of science behind this. This is, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about algae. If, if you haven’t yet, you’re going to get to know this because it certainly solves a lot of problems. And with our problem of figuring out how to feed the world. This, while it may not be the perfect, you know, the one solution. It is certainly going to be a solution. Right? And all done right here out of Texas. We have Miguel Calatayud, who is a CEO of Qualitas Health. Miguel, thank you very much for joining us. This has been fascinating. We are going to have you back by the way. We’ve got a whole lot more to talk about. Miguel what is the easiest way for somebody to learn more about this.
Miguel Calatayud: So, the easiest ways is go online and just click www.Qualitas-health.com. Or go to any of your HEB’s and ask about our algae omega 3. And I do believe that you are going to be surprised about what algae can do for you and for the whole world.
Matt Register: Yeah.
Miguel Calatayud: Thank you very much.
Miguel Calatayud: No doubt. Miguel, thank you very much. Again guys, we got to go take a break. We got to pay some of our own bills. We’ll be back right after this. Talking about food. Don’t go anywhere.
