Münster Green Innovation Award goes to NURICOS

Three pitches, two awards, one start-up: NURICOS biosolutions

North Rhine-Westphalia celebrated its 80th birthday with a large festival in Münster, confidently showcasing its strengths across eleven themed “miles.” As early as Friday evening, the Climate Mile at the Aasee Terraces hosted the competition for the Münster Green Innovation Award — a pitch battle between selected companies that “make a genuine contribution to climate and environmental protection.” In three categories, one start-up competed against one scale-up, with each company given four minutes to present itself before facing questions from a high-caliber jury. In the first category — Agriculture — the newly founded start-up NURICOS biosolutions GmbH competed against the scale-up Stallgrün UG. A true local derby: both companies were founded by alumnae (and one alumnus) of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s research group at the Institute of Plant Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Münster.

Stallgrün was founded in 2023 by our alumna Judith Ryll and Thorsten Lansmann-Niehaus. The company offers pig farmers the opportunity to convert vacant barns into facilities for growing lettuce and vegetables year-round, regardless of the season. The required investment is manageable, and the whole system pays for itself in just four years, as Thorsten Lansmann-Niehaus explained. He himself comes from a pig farm — Stallgrün’s first customer which has since been followed by a whole series of others across Germany. Stallgrün is flourishing, and has hired two new employees just last week. A genuine success story, not only for the founders, but also for the many pig farms currently struggling for survival. A scale-up indeed.

And NURICOS? With their start-up, founded only two months ago, Dr. Anne Vortkamp, Dr. Carolin Richter, and Dr. Philipp Lemke, together with their doctoral supervisor Prof. Moerschbacher, are bringing the results of thirty years of research into real-world applications. Their first product, CaraPlant, is a balanced blend of selected chitosans — multifunctional biopolymers that they produce from a waste product of the food industry: shrimp shells. Chitosans have many beneficial properties, but not every chitosan is good for everything. And no one knows better than Prof. Moerschbacher’s research group which chitosan is best at what, and how to produce exactly the desired chitosan. CaraPlant, which has just been included in the FiBL list of inputs for organic farming, is a kind of vaccination for plants against stress. Using examples such as potatoes, strawberries and tomatoes, as well as grapevines and urban trees, Dr. Vortkamp showed how treatment with CaraPlant can protect these plants from heat and drought, strengthen their immune system, and stimulate root growth. This summer has drastically demonstrated the dangers of climate change, and plants cannot hide from the sun or switch on air conditioning. CaraPlant, therefore, comes at just the right time. The jury was convinced, and in addition to winning the Green Innovation Award in the Agriculture category, NURICOS also received the special “Out-of-Home Campaign” prize, which provides the start-up with a media budget for marketing.

NURICOS then had the opportunity to pitch twice more. First on Saturday afternoon on the Westphalia Mile, where four of the state’s start-up ecosystems presented themselves under the patronage of North Rhine-Westphalia’s Deputy Minister-President and Minister for Economic Affairs, Mona Neubaur. Then a third time on Sunday afternoon on the Science Mile, where Münster’s universities and research institutions presented their innovative ideas — this time also followed by a lively discussion with the audience after the short presentation. On both occasions, exciting contacts were made immediately afterwards, with people keen to support NURICOS biosolutions and its founders on their journey from promising start-up to successful scale-up. If they succeed, it will not only be they who win, but also farmers who farm sustainably and consumers who want to live healthily. And ultimately, all of us — and our entire beautiful planet.