By 2005, Sonu Singh had built and sold two IT consulting companies, but he was convinced there was a better way to handle IT. The new owners of his old company, however, didn’t share his point of view.
“I kept telling them the business model was going to change,” he says. “They kept looking at me like I was a complete dope.
“I finally said, ‘I’ve just got to stop talking about it. I’ve got to pull a team together and go do it.’”
So, in 2009, the 1901 Group moved into about 800 square feet of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (CRC). Singh says 170 of the company’s 250 employees work at the CRC now and he expects the Blacksburg workforce to grow to 250 within a year.
The company — whose customers range from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the Army to the Small Business Administration — is talking with the CRC about building a new facility to accommodate that growth.
Singh realized IT equipment and infrastructure had changed drastically, but the management model hadn’t changed in 30 years, particularly in government circles. The government was still contracting with companies that put employees on-site to manage systems. The 1901 Group offered a different approach.
About 80 percent of those services, he says, can be handled remotely — for 30 percent less than they would cost in D.C.
At first, convincing the federal government that its business and data can be securely managed from Blacksburg was a hard sell, Singh says. But, he adds, potential customers are beginning to understand that security has less to do with proximity than with infrastructure, networks and access control.
Edward Snowden, Singh points out, was a contractor working at a government site when he downloaded documents that revealed a secret National Security Agency surveillance program.
Singh grew up in Blacksburg, graduated from Virginia Tech and calls himself “a giant Hokie football fan.” But that’s not all that drew 1901 to the CRC.
“We wanted to locate the business in an area that had access to talent, a good quality of life and a moderate cost of living,” Singh says, pointing out that with Tech, Radford University and New River Community College, about 50,000 college students are studying within 15 miles of the 1901 Group’s CRC office. “There’s massive untapped talent here.”
There’s massive opportunity for growth, too. The federal government spends $100 billion a year on IT, Singh says. “All we have to do is bring 1 percent to Blacksburg, and we’ll be happy.”
When Bristol Compressors said it was closing, the late July announcement hit the Bristol area hard. The shutdown of the 43-year-old plant will eliminate 468 jobs, 13 percent of Washington County’s manufacturing employment.
“It’s a tough time,” says Saul Hernandez, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, “but we’re helping our neighbors, and we’re optimistic.”
Some Bristol Compressor workers, he says, “felt betrayed to some degree. There was a severance plan that was in place that was suspended. … You know, it’s hard, but they have their family and their faith.”
They also have a community that’s rallied to support them.
Businesses have offered help with printing and résumés. Restaurants and churches have offered free meals. The area’s chambers of commerce, local governments and business organizations held two job fairs, one with 42 employers gathered in Abingdon and another with more than 100 companies in Bristol.
With a local unemployment rate of 3.7 percent, those employers were happy to have an applicant pool that’s proven it’s workforce ready, Hernandez says.
“I’m hearing that some folks are finding some jobs, and they’re pretty well pleased with an applicant pool that has proved to be workforce-ready,” Hernandez says.
Bristol Compressors produced compressors used in air conditioning systems, heat pumps and refrigeration units.
The company has had a rocky history in recent years. It laid off 250 workers in 2012 after one investment group sold it to another. Eighty employees were let go in 2016.
“They’ve gone through so many hands,” Hernandez says. “I don’t know that there’s been anybody in there that’s had a long-term outlook in terms of Bristol Compressors. I think it’s been more year-to-year, tactically.”
At the beginning of this year, Bristol Compressors announced a partnership to develop new, more efficient, compressors. But in the end that change wasn’t enough to keep the company afloat.
Since 1998, state and local governments have given the company more than $4.6 million to aid in areas such as work-force training.
“We had a lot of discussions with Bristol Compressors that we weren’t allowed to publicize before they shut down,” Hernandez says, “but we’re not private equity. We’re not venture capitalists. We just can’t do that with taxpayer money.”
On its website, Bristol Compressors promised “an orderly end to production.” That may be a challenge, according to Hernandez. Employees are finding other jobs.
“They’re worried they won’t have enough people to run the plant and fill their orders,” he says. “You know, when you know your job’s ending in 35 days and you have no severance, there’s no loyalty.”
Montgomery County has invited five counties, five towns, four cities, two state universities, two trail organizations, two regional commissions and one metropolitan planning organization to join in a plan to create the Valley to Valley Trail. The proposed biking and walking trail would stretch from Botetourt County to Galax.
In a letter inviting discussion of the idea, Montgomery County Board of Supervisors Chairman Christopher Tuck wrote, “Our board believes that this ‘Valley to Valley’ trail can provide economic benefits as well as contribute to our quality of life here in Southwest Virginia.”
Commission Vice Chair April DeMotts says everyone contacted about the idea has expressed interest. The county is organizing the group’s first meeting. “I think the first thing the Valley to Valley Trail Committee will need to do is get out some maps, map out what we have, and then find out where are the good connection points, some of the low-hanging fruit,” DeMotts says.
Roanoke Valley Greenway Coordinator Liz Belcher thinks that may be a good first step.
“You’ve got to have a clue where you’re going to go, because the hardest part is getting right of way,” she says.
Trails can take time. The idea of creating trails in the Roanoke Valley dates back to Roanoke’s 1907 comprehensive plan. The first Roanoke Valley Greenway segment opened 90 years later.
Now the Greenway has more than 400 miles of trails, including the state and federal trails the Greenway connects with, more than 100 miles of on-road connectors for bikes and more than 90 miles of paddling trails on the Roanoke and James rivers.
At the other end of the proposed Valley to Valley Trail, New River State Park stretches for 57 miles, from Pulaski to Galax. Last year, that trail created $29.2 million of economic impact and the equivalent of 426 full-time jobs, according to a Virginia Tech study.
Building trails can cost up to $1 million per mile, Belcher says, particularly if they’re built with federal money. Environmental studies and compliance issues account for a lot of that sum. Each river crossing can add another $900,000 to $1 million.
And there are bound to be right-of-way issues. Even the New River Trail, built on a former railroad bed, had one landowner who stubbornly opposed it.
“For 17 years, there was a hole in the middle of that trail and a fence, and you weren’t allowed to go through,” Belcher says.
DeMotts says the Valley to Valley Trail could be 20 years away. “I expect there will be hurdles,” she says, “but I hope we’ll be able to mitigate those in a way that leaves everybody feeling satisfied. … I think it’s going to take a lot of people with a lot of passion to pull this off.”
The makers of Belle Isle Moonshine are “just boatloads of fun and energy,” says Amy Ciarametaro, executive director of the Virginia Distillers Association.
They’re also producing boatloads of premium moonshine.
Since its beginning in 2014, Belle Isle has grown to become the fifth-largest craft distillery in Virginia by volume. It also ranks 164th among the craft distilleries in the U.S., according to IWSR, a provider of data for the alcohol industry.
The Richmond-based company is on pace to sell about 12,500 cases of moonshine this year. Sales were up more than 150 percent during the first half of 2018 when compared with the same time period last year, says Belle Isle co-founder and CEO Vince Riggi. Its biggest seller is Honey Habanero, moonshine infused with Virginia honey and organic Virginia peppers.
Belle Isle also produces moonshine infused with grapefruit and moonshine infused with cold brew coffee along with two proofs of straight moonshine. Blood orange moonshine will be out soon.
Belle Isle’s founders have learned a lot in the five years since Riggi and Brian Marks sat drinking Tito’s vodka and soda while talking about an event they’d just left at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery in Richmond.
“The atmosphere at Hardywood was just electric,” Riggi says. He and Marks wanted the same kind of atmosphere at a distillery.
“We don’t come from the distilling industry,” Riggi says. “We don’t have any distilling background. We don’t have any prior knowledge of the space.”
Riggi considers that to be an asset. No prior knowledge means no preconceived notions of how a distillery is supposed to produce and market its product. Belle Isle, Riggi says, is “looking to do things as they should be done, not as they have always been done.”
After its initial run of liquor sold out, Belle Isle got big eyes. The company started spreading distribution as far away as China.
“That sounds cool,” Riggi says, but it wasn’t practical. “Where maybe a couple of years ago, we wanted to be in 50 states and international, we’ve really honed in our focus and stopped chasing the shiny objects … We don’t want to just scratch the surface in a market.
We really want to become the local brand in every market we’re in.”
Belle Isle now distributes its products in 12 states. Virginia is still its top state, but sales in other states have grown rapidly. Even as Virginia’s sales doubled, its percentage of total sales has fallen.
“We feel like we’re really barely scratching the surface. We’re just starting to find our stride,” Riggi says. “It’s that age-old adage: Surround yourself with people smarter than you and hire well. And we’ve certainly been fortunate enough to have done that in spades.”
A Scottish barrel maker owned by a French company is opening two plants in Southwest Virginia, investing a total of $35 million and creating as many as 185 jobs.
Speyside Bourbon Cooperage, which opened a stave mill in Bath County in July, plans to invest $9 million in another stave mill in the Highland Business Park in Washington County.
The staves will be turned into bourbon barrels at a former woodworking plant in the Smyth County community of Atkins, a $25 million investment.
General Manager Darren Whitmer says natural resources helped draw Speyside to Southwest Virginia. (The new plants will get about 80 percent of the white oak they use from Virginia.) Location mattered, too. In addition to the Bath County stave plant, Speyside has facilities in Ohio. Most of its customers are in Kentucky.
Finding an empty, available, 270,000-square-foot building that used to be a cabinet factory in Smyth was a bonus. Whitmer says the cooperage there can be turning out barrels 12 to 18 months sooner than if the plant began as an open field. The building was “somewhat tailor-made for a cooperage,” Whitmer says, “because we’re nothing more than woodworkers at the end of the day.”
But they’re a very specialized kind of woodworker. “You’re fitting wood sticks together with no nails or glue or anything,” he says. “Six metal hoops holding the barrel together — so it does take some skill and understanding.”
Coopers aren’t exactly commonplace, but Speyside has a remedy for that.
“We train our own,” Whitmer says. “I’ve got 15 to 20 years in the business, and my right hand, Alberto Ramirez, my production manager, probably has 20-plus years in the business. We teach it ourselves, the two of us … When we opened up our stave mill in Millboro a couple of months ago, I was there in gloves and jeans and safety glasses with a smile on my face, teaching guys how to run a stave saw and make a stave.”
Each 53-gallon barrel is more than a container, according to Whitmer. It’s integral to whiskey’s character.
“All of the color comes from the white oak,” he says. “And probably 50 percent of the flavor comes from the white oak.”
Incentives for the Speyside project include a $325,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a $200,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund and $510,000 in Tobacco Region Opportunity Funds.
Pulaski County might not be the first Virginia community people associate with international business, but maybe it should be. The county, with a population of 35,000, is home to eight companies based outside the U.S.
“We’ve got Sweden, Australia, Colombia, Poland, Mexico, Canada, Germany and Brazil, and we’ve got more in the pipeline,” says County Administrator Jonathan Sweet.
Sweden is the big contributor on that list. Located in Dublin, Va., Volvo Trucks’ largest manufacturing plant has more than 3,000 employees. According to the Virginia Employment Commission, that’s more workers than any other industry sector in the county.
Altogether, Sweet says, international companies account for more than 4,000 Pulaski County jobs. Those are direct jobs, Sweet emphasizes, not a number generated by a multiplier formula.
“That is huge,” he says. “In fact, there are some communities that don’t have 4,000 jobs in Southwest Virginia … That’s the statistic. We’ve got more jobs associated with international companies than we do with national companies.
“Some of it we’ve been fortunate to have a little luck on our side, but what we’re trying to do is parlay our success and market our success and increase our success when it comes to international business.”
One of those international companies grows vegetables indoors. In addition to making trucks, the others manufacture siding, Keurig cups, candles, high-tech fabrics, and industrial foam and tape.
Volvo came to Dublin first as a partner with White Motor Co., then as the owner of the former White plant. Now the Swedish company is an important part of the region’s economy. And it’s presence makes a good argument for courting international investment.
“We’ve got the foundation,” Sweet says. “We’re just looking to build more blocks, put more stories on the foundation.”
Experience with foreign companies has helped Pulaski County be sensitive to “nuances and specifics” of other cultures. Good relationships with foreign companies already doing business in Pulaski County mean the county has good ambassadors for international prospects.
Another very important ingredient, Sweet says, is “a board of supervisors and an economic development authority that get it.”
The supervisors have committed funds to establish an International Baccalaureate program in county schools.
“We’re really working to build an ex-pat community,” says Economic Development Director Michael Solomon.
Many things have contributed to Pulaski County’s ability to attract foreign investment, says Sweet. The U.S. is stable, and there’s relatively little corruption. Recent tax changes that favor corporations help, he says, along with the recent threat of tariffs on foreign goods.
Some companies are considering moving operations to the United States so they can keep their piece of the U.S. market.
Sweet and Solomon say Pulaski County’s people are also important assets, as workers and as neighbors.
“We just have really good people,” Solomon says. “People are kind here. They’re welcoming, and I think sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle. … I really feel like that’s a big thing to our secret sauce. I think that goes for the whole region.”
Before he came to Pulaski County, Sweet was Carroll County’s economic development director. He also has been a project manager for Danville. In Bland and Grayson counties, he served as county administrator and chief economic development officer.
His international interests began early. Sweet’s mother was born in Spain, and he grew up traveling to Europe to visit family.
Sweet now travels for Pulaski County. On a visit to Volvo headquarters in Sweden, he and his team met with 15 companies. He also met with U.S. ambassadors and U.S. Virginia trade officials. In less than two years as Pulaski County’s administrator, Sweet also has visited Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Brazil.
Those trips, Sweet says, are not about county-to-business contacts. They’re about people-to-people connections.
“A lot of these communities, particularly in Southwest Virginia, are waiting for a knock at the door,” Sweet says. “That’s not what we are doing.”
The Roanoke and New River valleys are developing a potent mix.
While organizations such as Virginia’s Blue Ridge and Roanoke Outside promote the region’s manmade attractions and natural wonders, the valleys are building their local economies on technology, medical research, education and entrepreneurship.
The outdoor and vacation promotional efforts already are attracting attention to the region. The area’s trails, rivers, breweries, wineries and music venues have been featured in Southern Living, Men’s Journal, USA Today, CraftBeer.com, Expedia and most recently, Outside Magazine.
The rivers, the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway are natural draws, and the annual Blue Ridge Marathon pulls in runners attracted by the challenge of the country’s toughest road race.
But Catherine Fox, vice president of public affairs and destination development at Virginia’s Blue Ridge, says the region is claiming a new title. “We’re putting our stamp on Virginia’s Blue Ridge as America’s East Coast Mountain Biking Capital,” she says.
That may sound like hype, but in May, the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) designated the region and its more than 300 miles of trails a Silver-Level IMBA Ride Center. It is the only silver-level destination in Virginia and one of just 15 in the world. Other regions on the list include Steamboat Springs and Vail Valley, Colo.; Sun Valley, Idaho; Santa Fe, N.M.; and Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“We’re just ecstatic to be silver level and to be in such elite company,” Fox says. “When you add the Greenways [trail system] to it, you really are appealing to a wider audience than just that of the mountain biker, but people who love to bike.”
Fox expects many of those people to participate in the first Grand Fondo, which will take cyclists over 30-, 50- and 100-mile road courses through Botetourt County this October. She’s also excited about the potential to connect downtown Roanoke to the trails at Explore Park, which is just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Montgomery County’s supervisors and Christiansburg’s Town Council talked in June about eventually extending the Huckleberry Trail, which connects Blacksburg and Christiansburg to Roanoke County and the Roanoke Valley Greenway.
Research center expansion
The valleys already are connected by institutions, perhaps most notably the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute in Roanoke.
Created by Tech and Carilion Clinic, the region’s largest employer, the medical school became the university’s ninth college in July. Meanwhile, the research institute is working on a new building to accommodate 25 to 30 new research teams — about 350 people.
“It’ll be an interesting impact on the demographic and the age distribution of the population in the area,” says Michael Friedlander, the institute’s founding executive director. “It brings a lot of culture and diversity to the city, which I think is good.”
The research center already is “a major nationally recognized and internationally recognized epicenter of modern biomedical research. … It gives us — the city of Roanoke and the valley and the region — a national identity and brand,” Friedlander says.
The institute also gives the region’s economy a significant boost. With more than 200 employees earning an average salary of about $80,000 (in addition to about 100 students), the facility spends $25 million or more in grant money each year. “That is new money” that flows in from outside the region, Friedlander says.
Since its research teams began working in 2010, the institute has had a regional economic impact of about $400 million, Friedlander says. Its influence, however, is more than economic.
Researchers Sharon Ramey and Stephanie DeLuca, for example, developed a therapy that trains the brains of children with cerebral palsy to recover function. Ramey spent three weeks in Hue, Vietnam, this past spring teaching others about the therapy.
“This therapy was invented and developed by our folks … for kids, and now it’s being used worldwide, and our folks are training other people how to use it,” Friedlander says.
Institute researchers also have created six companies.
Robert Gourdie, for example, has developed a treatment to help heal foot ulcers in patients with diabetes.
That research led Gourdie and a former postdoctoral fellow, Gautam Ghatnekar, to found FirstString Research Inc. in 2005. Last year the company received the Small Business Administration’s Tibbetts Award for innovation in a White House ceremony.
Another researcher-entrepreneur is Warren Bickel. His research on how to reduce cravings among people with addictions led to the creation of BEAM Diagnostics.
The company now is part of the second cohort at RAMP, the Regional Acceleration and Mentorship Program, in downtown Roanoke.
RAMP program
Housed in a former hospital building, RAMP is a cooperative venture involving the city, Virginia Western Community College and the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council (RBTC).
RAMP businesses get a place to work and internet access for a little more than 11 months, says Robert McAden, RBTC’s president and CEO. They also receive a five-to-six-month educational program and mentoring.
RAMP is not a business incubator, McAden says. “It’s really much more of a focused program … after the program ends, you don’t get to just stay here. You have to go make it on your own.” The program ends with a demo day during which businesses pitch themselves to potential investors.
Every business gets the same educational component, but the mentoring is specialized to each company. The companies also help each other.
“I would say they learn as much from each other going through this and sharing the shared experience of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and what it’s like to go through this,” McAden says. “We’ve had a good mix of software and medical and engineering, so they kind of run the gamut as far as what the companies do, but they have to have some type of technology component to be considered.
“The other thing is we have to feel like they are a company that we feel like we can help through the mentors we have in this region and through the educational component,” he adds. “We want to feel they are coachable and are open to suggestions and open to the opportunities that are provided here.”
Figuring out how to turn research into businesses is vital to the region’s future, McAden says. “I think RAMP is just one facet of that, of helping researchers and helping the community look to the research and look to that intellectual property and how do we commercialize it and how do we use that to really propel the growth of this region.”
Workforce development
Another important facet in economic growth is the creation of a trained workforce. Montgomery County Public Schools are helping students learn about the vocational opportunities that await them after high school.
“My personal opinion is that a student doesn’t understand what it’s like to work until they do it, and we’d like for them to understand it before they leave high school,” says Rick Weaver, the county’s supervisor for career and technical education.
The schools — and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce, which is supporting the program — also want students to know what kind of jobs the region offers.
About 400 county students got work experiences during the 2017-2018 academic year. Many of them worked at fast-food restaurants, but others worked for an electrical contractor, an HVAC contractor, a timber-frame contractor, a veterinary clinic and a dairy.
Students also worked at the school system — in classrooms, the bus garage, cafeterias and IT desks. They also served as school custodians and, in one case, as a marketing coordinator for high-school athletics.
“We’re trying to have our kids well informed about the work world, about the options in the work world,” Weaver says. “And we’re trying to raise the visibility of students who are already doing something other than going to a four-year college, and getting there and saying, ‘I’m here. Now what do I do?’”
Students who complete work programs and pass a work readiness exam get a special seal on their diplomas. Graduates who head straight into the workforce, the military or technical training participate in a ceremony modeled on the letter-of-intent signings schools stage for star athletes who get college athletic scholarships. About 60 students took part in the first ceremony, held in May.
“For years, society in general and parents specifically have been convinced that we all have to go to college, and schools have been celebrating who’s going to college,” Weaver says. “Well, there’s other paths, and we’re trying to make that clear to everyone.”
With all the news coming out of Virginia Tech about burrito-delivering drones, self-driving vehicles and autonomous underwater craft, it’s easy to forget the university began as, and continues to be, an agricultural school. As incongruous as it may seem, robotics and agriculture often overlap, and innovations emerging at that intersection are almost certain to grow.
Associate Professor Alexander Leonessa, for instance, advised two student teams who collaborated to win the 2018 agBOT Challenge, a national competition to see whose robot can best perform an agricultural task.
The challenge in this year’s competition was to create an autonomous watermelon-harvesting machine. One of the Virginia Tech teams concentrated on getting the harvester in place. The other focused on evaluating and harvesting the melons. The resulting collaborative system had to perform on its own.
“This was about creating an autonomous harvesting system, with the emphasis on being autonomous,” Leonessa says. “So, there was no human interaction. You push a button, and the thing goes and finds the watermelons, decides if they are ripe, and, if they are, picks them up.”
The winning watermelon harvester is a two-part system. An ATV equipped with sensors finds the watermelons and positions the harvester so it can place each melon into a trailer.
But first, the harvester has to be sure the watermelon is ripe. It makes that decision the same way many people do — by thumping the melon and listening for a deep, hollow sound. The harvester slaps each melon and measures the resulting sound against a frequency range ripe watermelons generally produce.
“We placed a microphone under the unit and angled it to the bottom of the melon where it captures the reverberations from the slapper,” the teams’ leader, Hongxu “Howard” Guo, a double major in mechanical and electrical engineering, said in a release describing the project. “If the audio analysis indicates a sound ratio above a particular threshold, what we call the sub-band short-time energy ratio, then the watermelon is ripe and harvested. If not, it is left on the ground.”
The system’s design was the result of a four-month process, Leonessa says. Students considered several options, including using a robotic arm to lift the melons into the trailer. That option was complicated and expensive. The final version, Leonessa says, is relatively inexpensive, while being easy to use and maintain.
It’s also successful, winning the contest’s top prize of $30,000. That money will go toward next year’s agBOT Challenge and other projects, Leonessa says.
He says that while he would entertain proposals to commercialize the watermelon harvester, that’s not really the point of the project. It was a senior project in a two-semester class that gives undergraduates a chance to prove they can design, develop and build a prototype that will solve a problem.
“For me, it was more of a teaching project,” Leonessa says. “My career as a watermelon harvester has pretty much come to an end.”
Grape harvester Other robotic farming projects are much more directly aimed at commercialization. Mahindra Group, for instance, established the Mahindra AgTech Center at Virginia Tech in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg. Mahindra, a $19 billion federation of companies based in India, has more than 200,000 employees in 100 countries. While Mahindra’s business interests range from aerospace to financial services, it sells more tractors than any other company in the world. The first project of Mahindra AgTech Center is to develop a robotic table grape harvester that can be mounted on those tractors.
People have been trying to build such a harvester for decades, but they’ve never succeeded, says Professor Tomonari Furukawa, the project leader. The problem, he explains, is two-fold. Technology hasn’t been up to the complicated task, and researchers were aiming too high. Time and research may have solved the first problem. A change in approach may have taken care of the second.
“In the past, the robotics people have been always trying to develop automatic harvesters,” Furukawa says. “Many people have made a mistake, as I mentioned, simply because they were too ambitious … We don’t try to be ambitious. It’s an assistive approach … We don’t try to fully automate. Rather, we try to make an assistive robot that uses human capabilities.”
Instead of replacing humans with an autonomous picker, Furukawa and Mahindra aim to make humans better at the job. “We minimize the motion and the other effort that the human needs to put in, including perception,” Furukawa says. “That way, the humans feel less fatigue.”
That assistance makes humans more efficient pickers. “Their aim is quality management,” Furukawa says of Mahindra, “because human quality management is very subjective and cannot be controlled.”
Some human pickers may exercise good judgment about which grapes are ready to harvest and which are not. “It depends on the harvester,” he says. By using image sensors and other measuring equipment, “the robot doesn’t make a mistake. The robot is much more consistent.”
Picking grapes is particularly challenging for a robotic arm. Grapes are small and soft. Their sizes and shapes vary. So, the harvester must be versatile. Once the machine masters grapes, it may open the way to other crops. “We want to learn from grapes,” Furukawa says, “and we want to move on to other agriculture products as well.”
Furukawa doesn’t want to guess how long he and his team of doctoral students will be working on the grape harvester, but he says the timeline will probably be measured in years.
“We don’t want to say it. It just gives us pressure,” he says. “As the research goes, we will develop a roadmap to commercialization.”
Wearable robotics
Another project aiming for commercialization is a three-year study funded by an NSF Partnership for Innovation grant that explores how assistive, wearable robotics might help farmers work longer and more efficiently while avoiding wear on their bodies.
“In Virginia, the average farmer’s age is about 65, which means decades of hardship and hard work,” Leonessa says. ”This is really taking a toll on the farmers and their bodies.”
His team plans to develop assistive robotics — ranging from knee braces to exoskeletons — to reduce that toll. The devices will provide stability and support, but they will also give farmers additional strength. They may allow farmers to handle their daily tasks more easily so that they can continue to work years longer.
“Some think they’re trying to make farmers work forever,” Leonessa says. “That is not our intention.” The goal of his project is to relieve farmers “of some of the hardship of the work so they can age gracefully and come out at 65 with their body fully functional rather than being deteriorated by a lifetime of hard work.”
Because of the hard work and the large investment new farming operations require, fewer people are interested in farming as a career. Therefore, improving farmers’ efficiency, endurance and health are increasingly important.
The project is recruiting farmers now. Participants will visit a physical therapist to see what kinds of apparatus might benefit them. Leonessa’s team will outfit the farmers, who will go back to the physical therapist to make sure everything seems to be working as it should. Then farmers will head out into the field, and researchers will evaluate the robotics’ efficacy.
While a farmer in wearable robotics might sound like a plot element in a sci-fi novel, Leonessa points out that futuristic technology already is embedded in modern agriculture. Farmers use drones and GPS devices to help them decide when and where to plant, water and fertilize their crops and also when and where to apply pesticides and herbicides. There’s no reason to think technology’s role won’t continue to grow.
“I tell my students, I look forward to the day when, to be a farmer, you need a degree in computer science,” he says.
Leonessa is half-joking when he says that. But only half.
When Alpha Natural Resources emerged from bankruptcy two years ago, it became two coal mining companies — Alpha and Contura Energy.
By the end of the third quarter of this year, the companies plan to get together again. They announced in April an all-stock merger agreement that, subject to the approval of Alpha shareholders, would combine their operations under the Contura name.
The combined company, led by Contura’s management team, would be based in Bristol, Tenn. Before its bankruptcy, Alpha had its headquarters in Bristol, Va.
Contura shareholders would own 53.5 percent of the combined company while Alpha shareholders would own 46.5 percent. The new company plans to be listed on the NYSE.
In a statement released with the merger announcement, Contura CEO Kevin Crutchfield said improving global coal markets, efficiencies created by divestment of unproductive holdings and “resulting potential cost synergies” offer “an exciting opportunity for value creation” that will “unify some of the best coal miners in the world under one organization.”
By selling mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, Contura removed about $120 million of reclamation liabilities from its books, according to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the company. The presentation says Alpha’s sale of about 250 permits on inactive properties also relieved it of $167 million in liabilities for reclamation, water treatment and other issues.
The new company expects to save $30 million to $50 million through the merger’s “resulting potential cost synergies.” The companies had a combined net income of nearly $291 million last year.
The presentation says the merger will create the nation’s largest supplier of metallurgical coal, with more than 12 million tons in sales last year and 1 billion tons of reserves. Metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, is less susceptible to changes in demand than thermal coal, which is used in power-generation.
The new Contura will have 22 underground mines and eight surface mines. Most of those mines are in West Virginia, but seven are in Virginia, and one is in Pennsylvania.
Contura also owns 65 percent of the Dominion Terminal Associates coal export facility in Newport News.
The merger will “materially improve each entity’s operational, financial and risk profiles,” Contura Chairman Neale Trangucci said in a statement.
“Achieving such a turnaround in less than two years is no small task,” Trangucci said. “Our board is proud of and appreciates the diligent work of employees and management of both organizations, and we are very excited about the future of the new combined company.”
Steve Critchfield didn’t expect to be the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council Entrepreneur of the Year.
“I was surprised,” he says. “I really was. I’m not saying that because that’s what you’re supposed to say in Hollywood.
“I really did not think much about it because I’ve been doing this since ’86 and probably before that. I didn’t know what the word ‘entrepreneur’ meant until recently, but I enjoy doing this stuff.”
What Critchfield has been doing is creating companies and solving problems. In 1986, he founded Tele-Works, a company that enabled electronic payments to local governments across the United States and beyond. Since selling the company in 2014, he has helped other startups get organized and succeed, helped start a Virginia Tech program offering graduate-level training for aspiring local government officials and assisted in establishing scholarships and awards at Tech.
Critchfield’s initial vision and motivation of Tele-Works was not so grand. “I didn’t start the company to be an entrepreneur or even sell it,” he says. “I started the company because I needed a job.”
Critchfield’s current company, MOVA Technologies, aims a little higher. The goal of the Pulaski-based business is to turn toxic and climate-changing air pollution into commodities with a market of $500 billion or more.
MOVA uses technology developed by the late Arthur Squires, a Virginia Tech professor who began his career working on the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb. MOVA intends to capture the components of the exhaust from burning fossil fuels. Those components — including mercury, lead, arsenic and carbon — then would be recycled.
Many organizations have attempted to capture and store carbon, including American Electric Power’s Mountaineer Plant project that closed in 2012, the same year Squires died. None of those attempts have managed to accomplish the task in a way that is economically feasible, Critchfield says.
“Everybody can capture carbon, or at least they think they can,” he says. “But what they’ve been trying to do is sequester it.”
MOVA means to market it. The next step toward that end is building and testing a prototype of the pollutant-capturing apparatus. Once that’s done, Critchfield plans to market the technology to chemical companies that can manufacture the sorbents used to capture the components. Four-year-old MOVA is “probably two years away from that point,” he says.
The patents for the process are owned by a trust, Critchfield says, and 25 percent of any profits will support Virginia Tech engineering and agriculture programs and art programs across Southwest Virginia.
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But Catherine Fox, vice president of public affairs and destination development at Virginia’s Blue Ridge, says the region is claiming a new title. “We’re putting our stamp on Virginia’s Blue Ridge as America’s East Coast Mountain Biking Capital,” she says.
“It’ll be an interesting impact on the demographic and the age distribution of the population in the area,” says Michael Friedlander, the institute’s founding executive director. “It brings a lot of culture and diversity to the city, which I think is good.”
RAMP businesses get a place to work and internet access for a little more than 11 months, says Robert McAden, RBTC’s president and CEO. They also receive a five-to-six-month educational program and mentoring.
“My personal opinion is that a student doesn’t understand what it’s like to work until they do it, and we’d like for them to understand it before they leave high school,” says Rick Weaver, the county’s supervisor for career and technical education.
Other robotic farming projects are much more directly aimed at commercialization. Mahindra Group, for instance, established the Mahindra AgTech Center at Virginia Tech in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg. Mahindra, a $19 billion federation of companies based in India, has more than 200,000 employees in 100 countries. While Mahindra’s business interests range from aerospace to financial services, it sells more tractors than any other company in the world. The first project of Mahindra AgTech Center is to develop a robotic table grape harvester that can be mounted on those tractors.