AgroRenew, a start-up company that planned to convert watermelon waste into biodegradable plastics, has announced on Friday that it is suspending plans to build a $79 million manufacturing facility near Vincennes.
According to a post on AgroRenew’s Facebook page, the company says, “unforeseen circumstances, continued delays in process equipment deliveries, and growing financial constraints on out of country deliverables have introduced challenges to the construction timeline and the current viability of the project.”
The company also says it has transferred the deed to the property for the planned facility back to the Knox County Indiana Development Corporation (KCIED) to transfer all the land on Elkhorn Road south of Vincennes back to KCIED and has completed the deed transfer. Along with the land transfer, AgroRenew says it plans to repay the grant dollars provided as part of the economic development incentive, as well as “supporting any local investors by purchasing their investment back.”
AgroRenew was founded by Brian Southern and his wife Katie in 2023. In December of that year, Brian told Hoosier Ag Today that he and his wife created the idea to convert watermelon waste into bioplastics after talking with a number of watermelon producers in the Knox County community.
“Knox County is the number one producer of watermelons in the state of Indiana and number two in the country,” said Southern. “My wife and I were talking to them about the amount of food waste they have every year because their crops don’t sell, or they don’t pass their quality inspections. The number is just staggering—it’s approximately 100 million pounds a year. We were thinking there has to be something better we can do with that, and so we started to research. My wife, Katie, use to be a food scientist, and I was a processing engineer, so we looked at some other ways that we can utilize this BioSource.”
A groundbreaking ceremony was held in June 2024 for the planned 196,000-square-foot facility south of Vincennes in the U.S. 41 Industrial Park. At the time, the company also planned to hire 250 people and develop a Bioplastics Innovation Center on-site for research scientists to develop new innovations.
However, in June 2025, Brian Southern told Hoosier Ag Today that tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on steel and aluminum were impacting the construction of a the manufacturing facility.
“Obviously, nobody budgets for a 50-percent increase in costs on a piece of equipment, and we’re in that boat right now,” he said. “Most recently, some of the tariffs are impacting our ability to get access to building materials. It’s made our supply chain kind of nervous when it comes to whether or not we going to have a tariff. That has impacted our ability to get confirming dates on when equipment can arrive.”
At that time, Southern said that he still expected AgroRenew’s new production facility to be finished by the end of next summer to coincide with harvest in 2026.
The company says it will “continue to work with partners on the use of the formulations and technology developed.”