Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (OTCMKTS:KBLB) shares were down 4.29% on Friday to $0.0670 and flat in after-hours trading. Share prices have been trading in a 52-week range of $0.01 to $0.10. The company has a market cap of $52.67 million at 772.13 million shares outstanding.
Kraig Biocraft Laboratories is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of spider silks. Its lead product is a genetically engineered spider silk known as Monster Silk, which is a composite fiber, which is spun by its line of transgenic silkworms and composed of a combination of both spider silk proteins and silk from a silkworm. The company makes use of genetic engineering technologies to develop fibers for use in target markets, including the textile, specialty fiber and technical textile industries.
In a press release, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories announced that it has completed the planting of the first 2,000 mulberry trees at its Texas location. This facility and these trees will be used to supply the company’s recombinant spider silk operations with fresh mulberry leaves which it expects to begin harvesting by the third or fourth quarters of this year.
We’ve invested a tremendous amount of effort over the last thirty days preparing the new Texas facility and planting these first 2,000 trees,” said Kraig Biocraft Laboratories COO Jon Rice. “Those long days and a handful of fire ant bites have rewarded us, with what we expect will be, the capacity to support all of our US silk production without the need of expensive artificial diet. We’re looking forward to our first harvest this fall.”
The company is also in the process of assessing its needs for additional mulberry trees and will make a decision regarding additional plantings later this year. Recall that Kraig Biocraft Laboratories previously announced that it has successfully launched production at its new Indiana production facility with the hatching of more than 40,000 silkworms.
Bringing this facility online is a major milestone for Kraig Labs and a significant step forward for spider silk manufacturing”, said COO Rice. “These first 40,000 silkworms are just the beginning of our aggressive plans to scale domestic production. With this facility, we now have the capability to rapidly respond to the numerous request we receive for our record setting Dragon Silk™. I would like to congratulate our team, whom have been working tirelessly to meet our production schedule and to see this goal realized.”
From this, the company can be able to produce all of the recombinant spider silk necessary to fulfill its contract with the US government on time. This was valued at up to $1 million from the US Department of Defense for a batch of ballistic shoot packs made from the company’s proprietary Dragon Silk material to be used for testing in body armor use.
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