We speak with several microcap companies every week, searching for new investment ideas that fit and adding those with potential to our watchlist. We use a proprietary pillar checklist to scrutinize stocks for inclusion in our portfolio. The checklist found that EnWave (NWVCF) (ENW.V) lacked evidence of potential future growth in its royalty revenue model. We added EnWave to the portfolio in July, as we believe the company is now on track to record its highest royalty revenue on record in fiscal 2027, while the stock price is near its all-time lows.
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Replenish Nutrients (ERTH.CN) (VVIVF) is an Alberta-based regenerative fertilizer manufacturer with four revenue streams, scheduled to go live simultaneously in the quarter now underway. I met CEO Neil Wiens at the Planet Microcap conference in July and had a follow-up conversation with him this week.
Information for this Replenish Nutrients write-up is from my conversations with COE Wiens and from the public record.
The Setup
Replenish Nutrients manufactures a proprietary regenerative macro- and micronutrient fertilizer, combined with biological material, through a patented zero-waste process. A granulation plant at Beiseker, Alberta, is the flagship asset. Customers are farmers across Western Canada and the northern U.S. plains.
What is appealing here is that the company has established four revenue streams:
The Beiseker granulation plant reaching full 2,000 tonnes-per-month capacity — roughly C$1.2 million of monthly revenue at 30% margins.
A newly commissioned pellet facility at the Beiseker Hutterite Colony, guided to 1,000 tonnes per month.
Initial production under a licensing agreement with Farmers Union Enterprises, a 95-year-old farmer-owned cooperative covering a five-state Midwest network of nearly 70 million acres — at 90% margins to Replenish.
Initial production under a second license with MJ Ag in northern Alberta.
Behind those, a C$15 million strategic investment closed in July funds a 150,000-tonne facility expansion targeted for early 2028 and, for the first time in this company’s history, removes the funding-failure scenario from the analysis.
The entire investment case rests on a revenue mix shift that is underway and has not yet been reported.
The SRC Agrominerals Relationship
The July 17 agreement is the most consequential event in this company’s history, and it is four transactions in one. SRC Agrominerals is the private owner of the Spanish River Carbonatite deposit outside Sudbury, Ontario.
Equity - 50 million units at C$0.15 for C$7.5 million, each carrying half a warrant — 25 million warrants at C$0.225 for four years, accelerating if shares hold C$0.28 for twenty consecutive trading days, worth up to a further C$5.63 million. Closed July 23, taking SRC to a 19.9% ownership stake.
Debt - SRC also purchased a C$7.5 million senior secured second-lien convertible debenture — 10% fixed interest, payable quarterly in cash or shares at the company’s election, four-year maturity, convertible at C$0.225, or roughly 33 million shares. This debenture is SRC’s instrument and has nothing to do with the Sorbie arrangement discussed later.
Capital deployment - Proceeds fund the Beiseker Pelletization Expansion, working capital, inventory, debt repayment, and general corporate purposes. The expansion is a separate 150,000-tonne pelletizing facility at the existing Beiseker site, plus shared storage, load-out, and processing infrastructure, targeted for completion in Q1 2028 at guided 25–35% margins.
Supply — A ten-year carbonatite agreement obligates Replenish to purchase minimum annual volumes and to include a minimum specified percentage of carbonatite in its products, with C$1 million payable on execution for initial volumes. CEO Wiens explained that Replenish receives savings and the important addition of calcium to its products. It buys carbonatite at approximately C$120 per tonne against roughly C$250 per tonne of agronomic value delivered in the finished product, while adding calcium — which matters for soil structure, pH stabilization and nutrient uptake. The carbonatite deposit contains a high concentration of loosely bonded calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, plus trace amounts of rare earths, and lacks the radioactive or toxic heavy metals common to carbonatite deposits globally. It is reactive enough to break down in soil rather than remain chemically locked. It is OMRI- and ProCert-listed for organic use and has been applied across hundreds of thousands of acres. SRC cites university and field-trial data on soil pH stabilization, increases in microbial populations, and yield gains — data CEO Wiens notes he has not independently verified.
Governance - Tim Close, SRC’s CEO, joins the board. He has served for over 10 years as CEO of Ag Growth International (AGGZF), growing revenue fivefold while deploying over $700 million across 19 transactions in precisely this adjacency. Under the investor rights agreement, SRC now nominates one director, two after the debenture closes, and holds pro rata participation rights in future issuances.
SRC could eventually acquire Replenish Nutrients. It holds 50 million shares today. Full warrant exercise adds 25 million shares. Full debenture conversion adds roughly 33 million. That is approximately 108 million shares against a 300 million fully diluted count, about 36%, before any use of the pro-rata participation right, which lets SRC maintain its position through every subsequent raise. Add two board seats and a secured lien, and there is a well-defined path to control requiring no hostile action and no premium.
Unit Economics
Replenish is not trying to displace the nitrogen complex, the largest and most commoditized segment of the fertilizer market. Replenish’s fertilizer contains no nitrogen. Growers using it add urea separately. Replenish competes for the non-nitrogen portion of a farmer’s budget, where the key is agronomic response and soil function rather than dollars per unit. This means that the sales conversation is additive rather than displacing, which lowers the switching barrier. Farmers are not asked to abandon a working nitrogen program.
CEO Wiens explained that the Replenish fertilizer performs best on high-protein crops, as protein formation draws on sulfur and micronutrients beyond nitrogen alone, and the biological and calcium components support uptake efficiency. This focuses the sales effort on wheat, canola, pulses, and forage on the prairies rather than on every acre indiscriminately, and it means value is measurable in grain-quality premiums, not just yield.
I learned from CEO Wiens that roughly 100,000 tonnes of product cover approximately 1 million acres — about 200 pounds per acre. At C$600 per tonne, that is roughly C$60 per acre of Replenish product, providing a per-acre figure to sanity-check against a grower’s willingness to pay and converting capacity figures into market penetration. The Farmers Union territory alone, discussed below, is nearly 70 million acres. At the volumes discussed below, Replenish would be serving well under 1% of it.
The Granulated fertilizer economics are 2,000 tonnes per month, producing approximately C$1.2 million of revenue at a 30% margin. That is C$600 per tonne, C$14.4 million annualized, and roughly C$4.3 million in annual gross profit from the Beiseker granulation plant at full run rate.
The Hutterite Colony
The Beiseker Hutterite Colony pellet plant was commissioned in June and is geared to 1,000 tonnes per month. The colony owns the building. Replenish owns the equipment inside it. The colony takes 10% of the profit. Management is explicitly not in a hurry to add more colonies on those terms. On a facility generating perhaps C$2.2 million of annual gross profit, the colony’s cut is a couple hundred thousand dollars, a meaningful drag on a business whose case rests on margin expansion at scale. Management would rather own 100% of the funded Beiseker Pelletization Expansion than 90% of five colony plants that aren’t funded.
A little background is helpful in understanding how the Hutterite colonies and Replenish are natural and beneficial partners. Hutterite colonies are communal Anabaptist agricultural communities, typically 60–150 people, operating as single vertically integrated farm enterprises across large contiguous acreages. They are among the most capital-equipped and operationally sophisticated farm operators in Canada, with their own machinery, buildings, and skilled trades.
Replenish fertilizer builds soil over multiple seasons. That argument is economically compelling only to an operator farming the same ground indefinitely. A tenant on a three-year lease has no reason to pay for soil they may not be able to work in by 2030. Colonies are generational land stewards by design. The product’s payback period and the customer’s time horizon match.
Colonies are independent entities but informationally interconnected; practices and suppliers propagate across colony networks in ways they don’t across atomized commercial farms.
Vertical Integration and the Licensing Leg
Wiens is pursuing a vertical integration business plan that controls the process from mineral inputs through manufacturing to the finished product reaching the farmer. The SRC supply agreement is the upstream piece, locking in carbonatite at C$120 per delivered tonne, down from C$250. The owned Beiseker facilities are the manufacturing piece. The licensing agreements extend reach without capital. This is a company trying to own the margin at every step rather than sit in the middle of someone else’s chain.
The licensing leg is the best economics in the business. The Farmers Union (FUE) arrangement runs at 5,000 tonnes per month — 60,000 tonnes annually — at a 90% margin. FUE carries the plant, operations, and distribution across its five-state cooperative network; Replenish supplies process IP, raw materials, and technical support, and collects a fee per tonne. On previously guided economics of US$40–60 per tonne, 60,000 tonnes implies roughly C$3.3–4.9 million in licensing revenue at a 90% margin, that is, C$3.0–4.4 million in gross profit against essentially no incremental capital. 60,000 tonnes serves roughly 600,000 acres, under 1% of the FUE territory. The Q3 and Q4 reports will start to tell us which.
