The High Cost of Staying Warm, The Valor RX, Thank You ELDs, and Extreme Organics

Finally, we close with brief comments on The Coming Cost of Staying Warm, The Valor RX, Thank You ELDs, and Extreme Organics. First, with the recovery in single family home construction, demand for fiberglass insulation has soared from a low of 70% in 2012 to an estimated 90%+ in 2018. With no new plants in the pipeline, which take 3 years to build, manufacturers have announced 9% – 10% price increases already this year. For the builders of single family homes, it will be The High Cost of Staying Warm. Second, drug manufacturers are adopting a new glass to hold prescription drugs and vaccines. This glass, manufactured by Corning Inc., called Valor Glass, produces 96% less particles in the packaging portion of the manufacturing process as well as providing much improved crack resistance. For pharmaceutical companies, we see them offering the Valor RX soon. Third, orders for new Class 8, heavy duty trucks have gone through the roof. They are up almost 100% year-over-year for the first quarter and annualizing at almost a 500,000 unit rate, which would set a record for the industry. Not only have freight volumes been strong, but the adoption of Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) that strictly limit the driver hours to legally required maximums is having a large impact. We see the truck manufacturers saying: Thank You ELDs. And Fourth, a research scientist at Clemson University created a way to manufacture organic fertilizer. The process uses “extreme bacteria” isolated from the stomachs of cattle to produce an ammonia fertilizer, as good if not better than existing fertilizers made from natural gas. And since the bacteria create their fertilizer in a bioreactor that avoids the use of any fuel, the process is extremely low cost, potentially much lower than today’s existing plants. This fertilizer will allow organic farmers to start producing commercial volumes of food immediately, rather than waiting the three years needed for the natural nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil to make the soil as productive as using traditional fertilizer. For the farming industry, this marks the advent of Extreme Organics that may begin to significantly displace existing crops.

 

 

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