HOLYOKE — A state grant program intended to spur manufacturing, particularly in clean technologies, shone a spotlight Thursday on a Holyoke startup working to reduce food waste.

“The goal is to fund investment in awesome companies,” Yvonne Hao, Massachusetts secretary of economic development, said in announcing more than $10 million in grants to Clean Crop Technologies in Holyoke and 12 other entities to an appreciative crowd at the Mill 1 Events space at One Open Square.

The Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative (M2I2) is a program run by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative that aims to help fledgling companies, nonprofits and university research projects expand the manufacturing sides of their businesses to commercial scale.

Clean Crop Technologies uses electricity to generate cold plasma to remove microbes and other contaminants from seeds.

“People send us their seeds, and we treat them and send them back,” Cody Vild, vice president of product, told a tour group at Clean Crop’s 14,000-square-foot plant.

Clean Crop co-founder and CEO Daniel White said reducing food waste is a big challenge.

“Thirty percent of food never leaves the farmer’s fields because of mold and pests,” he said.

Many of the contaminants come from the seeds, so the goal has been to find an efficient way to clean seeds, White said. Clean Crop’s plasma method meets or beats any other method, he said, in terms of energy consumption and effectiveness.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

Gun club owners, law enforcement react to new gun law

Columnist J.M. Sorrell: Growing signs of antisemitism in the open

Shelburne retired astronaut says stranded NASA colleagues safe, making most of situation

Area property deed transfers, Sept. 5

Cross country: Amherst sweeps Northampton in season opening dual meet between powerhouses (PHOTOS)

The only bookstore in town: Heritage Books, located in Southampton’s former library, keeps history alive while embracing modern technology

Your Daily Puzzles

Cross|Word

Flipart

Typeshift

SpellTower

Really Bad Chess

At present the company has just one machine to perform the work. The $1.2 million grant announced Thursday will allow Clean Crop to have four more machines fabricated and add 15 jobs, doubling the workforce, over the next year.

“The goal is to have 200-plus employees in Holyoke by 2030,” White said.

Clean Crop started in Amherst and Northampton in 2019 and began technical work in early 2020 before moving to Holyoke in late 2021.

Christine Nolan, director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing, commended Clean Crop for developing partnerships with Holyoke Community College and Springfield Technical Community College.

White said the collaborations are “building a talent pipeline” in machine operators that will benefit the company.

Among the other grantees was the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which will use $265,000 to advance a cold-spray manufacturing technology that can support cost-effective repairs to corroded steel bridges, according to MassTech.

The project is estimated to create one to five jobs and the team will also make the equipment available to other groups at UMass Amherst.