Vestaron adds Papadellis as board chair

Former President and Chief Executive Officer Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., Randy C. Papadellis has been named as Chairperson of the Vestaron Board of Directors.

As Vestaron’s mission is to lead a peptide-based revolution in crop protection, Papadellis’ addition to the board, with his deep agricultural background and understanding of growers and grower needs, solidifies the commitment to this mission. Vestaron’s commitment continues to empower growers with novel, effective chemistries that address proven targets using peptides to overcome existing resistance issues while offering a desired safety profile for workers, bees, beneficials and the environment.

Papadellis’ career in the food and beverage industry spans 40 years with some of the top brands in the business, including Welch’s Foods and Cadbury Schweppes. In his 18 years as CEO of Ocean Spray, he transformed the cranberry grower cooperative’s operations and business model and built it into a globally recognized consumer brand with $2.3 billion in revenues, 2,400 employees, and products sold in over 80 countries.

“The breadth of executive and board management experience Randy brings to the role, his passions for sustainability and innovation, and his knowledge across various sectors of the food and agricultural industries will serve us very well,” Anna Rath, CEO, said in a news release. “I am particularly looking forward to leveraging his consumer branding experience as we look ahead to the positioning of Vestaron’s peptide-based solutions.”

Papadellis is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Emeriti for Colby College; a Board member of the Old Colony YMCA in Brockton, MA and Real Green Foods (a plant protein startup); and consultant for several private equity firms in the United States. Previously, he was on the board of Deoleo UK (world’s largest branded olive oil company), the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives in Washington, DC (Chairperson); and the Graduate Institute of Cooperative Learning at the University of Missouri (Chairperson).

“The recent success in commercialization that Vestaron can boast about confirmed my initial interest in the company,” shared Papadellis. “The approach that Vestaron is perfecting, from innovative, adaptive use of peptides to the EPA path and safety profiles of the products, ticks off several of the boxes that pique my interest. Additionally, the sustainability aspects of the company, addressing farms, farmers and the environment, align with my core beliefs. I believe I can add value and insight to amplify the growth of the organization.”

Vestaron is a company dedicated to improving the safety, efficacy and sustainability of crop protection through migration from synthetic pesticides to peptide-based biopesticides.  Vestaron is initially focused on a class of peptides that kill insect pests efficiently, but are practically safe for humans, beneficial insects and the environment. As part of this, the company has developed an empowered proprietary platform for peptide optimization, fermentation-based peptide production and in planta expression that will allow it to develop a wide variety of biologic crop protection and trait solutions.

Vestaron’s SPEAR was the winner of both the inaugural 2015 Bernard Blum Award and the 2020 EPA Green Chemistry Award for novel biocontrol solutions. Additionally, SPEAR was included on the short list for the 2020 Agrow’s Crop Science award for best biological.

More information at www.vestaron.com