Investments in soy-based products
March 1, 2025 | Kriss Nelson
Soybeans’ increasing use in new products stems from their renewable, abundant and sustainable nature. Soybean oil, in particular, is a highly sought-after replacement for petroleum-based materials and offers environmental benefits such as a reduced carbon footprint.
“Through the checkoff, we are partnering with industries to create environmentally responsible, sustainable and biobased products,” says Matt Herman, Iowa Soybean Association's (ISA) chief officer of demand and advocacy. “Those industries know they need a more sustainable product but often don't know where to begin. Often, they know little about soybeans, soybean oil and soybean meal. We are able to partner with these industries, leveraging our deep knowledge of soy and their investment to codevelop novel products that help's meet their needs while enabling a new market for farmers.”
Airable Research Lab: “Where sustainable solutions start”
Barry McGraw, Founder and CLO of Airable Research Lab
What does Airable Research Lab do?
McGraw: Airable is a business line of the Ohio Soybean Council (OSC). The lab started in 2019 as little more than a concept. OSC calculated the money spent funding external projects and compared it to the cost of opening our own lab.
We evaluated the other benefits as well, for example, the ability to control project scope and maintain intellectual property after project success. There was no solid argument against founding a lab.
In 2019, we rented some lab space from Ohio Wesleyan University and brought in a few contractors and consultants to help us get started. Our team has grown to eight salaried and three part-time employees over the past five years. We’ve already established several strategic commercial partnerships, and we’re in promising talks with several more.
Seven soybean state organizations are funding the lab, including ISA, doubling our original budget. We’re expanding the lab space and opening a second lab with additional capabilities.
Ten of our soy-based products are in the market, with more in the works.
How does an investment in Airable benefit farmers?
McGraw: Airable is the only research and development lab that is 100% focused on finding new uses for soybeans.
Historically, Qualified State Soybean Boards (QSSBs) have worked with outside laboratories when projects came along that benefited both parties. The labs themselves had no long-term investment in expanding markets for soy, so the project impacts were incidental at best, and the collaborations were not true partnerships — just funding agreements.
QSSBs were also paying a lot of money for this limited support. When we founded Airable, we calculated the same funding could cover as much as four times the number of hours in the lab. That’s four times as many projects dedicated to finding new uses for soybeans.
Airable also uses that funding to build partnerships with industrial and commercial clients that want to meet the growing demand for biobased products. These partners know what consumers want. The research is targeted at existing demand, whereas academic labs often do research for the sake of doing research, and the companies already have established commercialization pathways, most of which are quite effective. That’s our best strategy to get new products onto the marketplace.
What are some products that have increased soy demand and usage?
McGraw: Roof Maxx is a soy-based roofing treatment that rejuvenates aging roofing shingles. It’s a great alternative to replacing a roof that costs far less, is far less inconvenient and significantly reduces the asphalt waste in our landfills.
OSC supported Roof Maxx’s development before Airable was founded, and Roof Maxx came along with Airable for the ride. The lab continues to help with analyzing the formula, developing new functionalities, expanding markets for the treatment, and serving as a technical consultant. The product is thriving. There are hundreds of certified Roof Maxx dealers nationwide, and the company just had its best two quarters ever. Over Q2 and Q3, Roof Maxx treated about 15,000 homes and applied 300,000 gallons of soy-based treatment.
Another exciting product we helped develop is DeWalt bar and chain oil. It’s No. 1 overall on Amazon’s best-selling Bar & Chain oil list. It’s available and selling well in 1,500 Home Depot stores nationwide, other online platforms and brick-and-mortar locations. In its inaugural year, we project that single product to generate a demand of 55,000 bushels of soybeans.
We also collaborate with LFS Chemistry, a company focused on biobased chemistries for the oil and gas industry. We’ve helped them develop “Lubrisoy,” a 93% biobased lubricant intended for oil and gas drilling applications, which will hit the market soon, and LFS estimates monthly sales of up to 12,000 gallons.
Airable has also worked with them to develop a non-phosphorus-based scale inhibitor, which is used to prevent scale from accumulating in the equipment used for oil drilling. That’s a product being injected directly into the ground, so it’s great to provide oil companies with an environmentally-friendly alternative. The scale inhibitor is still in field trials, but LFS is projecting sales of 44,000 pounds per month when it’s at full commercial scale.
DGP: Bringing soy-based products to the marketplace
Scott Porter, CEO and co-founder of Dynamic Green Products
Who is DGP, and what role do you play in developing new soy-based products?
Porter: Dynamic Green Products (DGP) is a biobased lubricant manufacturer in Houston, Texas. We have several partnerships with ISO-certified labs and original equipment manufacturers for testing to exceed industry standards.
Airable is our exclusive partner for soybean lubricant/product research and development. DGP leverages its expertise and resources to formulate and test concept products. We’ve been working with Airable for almost four years. Without them, we could not have expanded as fast as we have with the product line.
The Ohio Soybean Council (OSC) provides checkoff dollars to DGP to fund the commercialization of soy-based products to support our ambitious retail and distribution plans. Their checkoff dollars also help us market/promote soy-based products at industry events and expos.
Because of OSC and Airable, we have developed and commercialized six products in the past three years and, especially in 2024, took these on a national roadshow. This has helped us become a leader in the bar and chain oil category on Amazon under DeWalt.
We successfully rolled out a national plan with Home Depot on the DeWalt Bar & Chain oil, have been shipping through Grainger and are preparing to double our retail door footprint in 2025 versus 2024.
Without OSC, we could not have scaled as fast as we have. The working capital to invest in inventory, shows/expos, and research and evelopment has been instrumental in our success.
Is there a preference for using soy?
Porter: We were mostly canola-based until meeting Barry McGraw. He gave me the confidence to switch to soy, and the largest benefit is that we can guarantee an all-American supply chain that supports American soybean farmers.
Soy is more readily available than canola and has a better sustainable profile for our product line. It provides many advantages over canola and is the only base oil we use for our total-loss products/lubricants.
Total-loss means there is no containment system, filters or way to collect the used oil. The oil is leaked, sprayed, dumped or poured directly into the ecosystem. Our goal is to make every total-loss product biobased and make it the industry standard.
Total loss products include:
- Bar & Chain oil: soy-based in 16-ounce, 32-ounce, 1 gallon and 55-gallon drum sizes offers superior lubricity, temperature stability and an optimized tackifier.
- Multiuse oil: soy-based in an 11-ounce trigger bottle for all applications (think alternative to leading petroleum aerosol).
- Grease: soy-based in a 14-ounce cartridge meant for multi-purpose high-temperature and high-load applications.
- Trimmer + Blade oil: Soy-based in an 8-ounce drip bottle, this oil is for hedge trimmers, pruners, lawn mower blades, etc.
These products perform as well as or better than most petroleum products. They are made in the USA from soybeans grown by American soybean farmers. They are sustainable, less toxic and provide a lower carbon footprint than petrochemical-based products.
Where can these products be purchased?
Porter: All products are available on Amazon under the DeWalt and DGP brands. DeWalt is carried by Home Depot, Grainger, Zoro, Bomgaars, Family Farm & Home, Atwoods, ACME Tools, DoItBest Hardware, Mac Tools and others. DGP is mostly direct from our website at changeyouroil.com.
Additional products launching during the first half of 2025 include:
A soy-based leather conditioner meant for genuine leather nourishment and protection, a hand scrub available for general hand cleaning and a cutting oil designed for drilling, tapping, cutting and sawmills.
Partnering for soy innovation
Eric Cochran, Professor at ISU’s professor at ISU’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the director of the Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites
What is a success story for soy-based research and what is currently being developed?
Cochran: The Iowa Soybean Association and my team have collaborated for more than a decade. New uses for soybeans have been the focus of extensive research and development during this time.
The first several years of research were dedicated to developing a new, rubbery-plastic additive to extend the life of asphalt pavement. The research on that product is matured and there are commercial products available through SoyLei Innovations marketing the material.
At Iowa State University, we continue researching that family of soybean oil-based plastics. We have discovered how to change the material properties, making them more suitable for different end-use applications.
This year, we have focused on a wind turbine project. Wind turbines are a focus of ours, in part, due to their visibility in Iowa and because they represent excellent examples of mechanical devices demanding peak-performance materials.
Wind turbines, aerospace, automotive applications all need very high strength, high stiffness fiber-enforced composites to do the job. What we have discovered with soy-based materials is we can make them stiffer to make them suitable as the plastic part of those composites and can blend the stiff materials with softer, rubbery materials we have been using, more like those used in asphalt applications to increase toughness.
What are the properties of soy-based materials?
Cochran: There are three important mechanical properties of soy-based materials:
- Stiffness, or how hard it is to bend the material.
- Strength: imagine hanging a weight off of material and asking how much weight can I hang off of it before it breaks?
- Toughness: a combination of stiffness and strength.
If you have a brittle piece of material, like a rod made out of glass, it is hard to bend, but once it bends, it snaps. On the other hand, you can have a rod that is exactly the same shape but made of metal. The metal is both stiff and hard to bend, but once you start bending it, you can deform it. Toughness makes a combination of difficulty to deform with strength and the ability to deform it a more significant amount before it breaks.
There are always trade-offs in materials between those three properties. Polymer composites are where it is at for the highest-performance materials. You need polymers that are both stiff (hard to bend) and tough. This enables composites that can take stresses, like being dropped on the floor, without shattering. That is what this project is all about: making soy-based plastics for those types of purposes.
Where are you in the process of recyclable wind turbine blade development?
Cochran: We are still in the material science phase, demonstrating that we can make materials possessing the basic strength and stiffness characteristics expected for high-performance turbine composites.
Why have you made working with soy a priority?
Cochran: The U.S. produces more than 20 million tons of soybean oil annually. Creating valuable, long-lasting products from this material is, in my opinion, much better for us and our farmers. We can keep precious material the farmers have grown and cultivated into valuable products that will last for several years.
Is there a future for soy-based products?
Cochran: I continue to be impressed and surprised by the number of different plastic materials we can make from soy. These range from additives to stiffer, stronger materials. I also think they have a lot of future potential in things like adhesives and coatings.
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