RE: ConcernsNot to pile too much crap onto the heap, but I am noticing a trend in the PR and public statements made by this company.
For example in the
REX Magazine Article it cites 100 million worms. It does not go into specifics of what numbers are/aren't included in the count but it is still irreconcilable to the 20.4 million estimated in the year end report.
The company is still paying for their previous place. My readings of there previous documents were thorough enough, and yet I still missed that point. It is made clearly in the new document which Getit pointed out yesterday. They are still looking to sublet their previous office and building space while paying for a secondary location.
Their estimates regarding worm population increases and production increases last summer were atrociously wrong.
Someone mentioned they stopped by the plant and saw a rather large stockpile of castings at a time when the stockpile ought to be diminishing rapidly. Rough optimistic numbers on this: if there were 300 crates at 1m^3 each (using 1300 lbs/m^3) then there were about 200 tons of product on the floor. Someone said that an employee mentioned it was 2 months of production - translating to 1200 tons a year. Accounting for ignorance or bad estimations you can double that number and the number is still a disappointment (though, there are no real large scale standards to compare. You can only extrapolate the possible production by comparing their floor space to small scale producers with far less bed space).
On top of that you can do research on the company
Worm Power and find plenty of well documented information. Watch their youtube videos and read Tom Herlihy's blog or anything from their website. Significantly less money was spent to establish the operation and produce decent results. It was done in a shorter time and with less manpower. On top of that, it is mostly automated and hardly requires any manpower. Whereas Forterra's millions of dollars have produced a system of wooden boxes and shovels (at least no one has seen any different).
I'm not dissuaded by the product they are attempting to make. I think if they stick with it that the quality of their potential product will out do what is seeming like bad management and marketing.
However the are breaking ground into mass production of a great 'green' product while riding a wave of public support for 'green' products and yet are moving at slug pace and spending a ton of money along the way.
Based on the Worm Power model, if they got rid of all their management, hired a single process engineer, a quality marketer, and a decent salesman then they could make this whole thing work. At least they could be open and knowledgable about what they are doing.
That said, I don't know what's going on. But I'm getting what I think is a decent impression of how this thing is working. And I don't think it's the product or idea's fault.