From Startup to Mentor: Jeremy Lang

When Jeremy Lang joined Ag-West Bio in the spring of 2025 as Director of Innovation & Business Development, an investment journey came full circle. 

Founder of Open Mind Developments (OMD), Jeremy is an entrepreneur, innovator, and sustainability advocate with a passion for creating businesses that make a lasting, positive impact. Open Mind Developments (OMD) creates biodegradable and compostable consumer products using renewable plant-based materials.  

You may have heard of some of Jeremy’s inventions. The Pela Case is an environmentally friendly smartphone case that is both compostable and biodegradable. He also co-founded Lomi, an appliance that recycles food waste at home.  

Karen Churchill, President and CEO of Ag-West Bio, says, “Ag-West Bio assists entrepreneurs and provides start-ups and small companies with the tools they need to bring their innovations to market. We were proud to be among the first to support OMD and Pela, recognizing early on the talent and vision Jeremy brings to the start-up ecosystem. His track record speaks for itself, and we’re thrilled to have him help the next generation of entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life.”  

In a recent interview with Jeremy, we explored how his career has come full circle, back to Ag-West Bio. 

Tell us about founding Pela Case and what inspired you to launch it?  

“I started Open Mind Developments in 2007 with a goal to look at things with an open mind for a different view and create solutions to problems. I saw plastic on the beach in Hawaii in 2008 while playing in the sand with my son who was a year and a half old at the time. The plastic litter bothered me, so I looked into where it was from and learned about the Pacific gyre, plastic in the ocean, and how less than 10% of plastic gets recycled. I wanted to find a more sustainable alternative to conventional plastic. That led to the creation of Flaxstic and Pela.” 

What was the balance of research on the material versus entrepreneurial work as you were getting started? 

I found biodegradable, biobased biopolymers as a replacement for conventional plastic, but the biopolymers were very brittle and had limited applications. I remembered learning as a boy about how flax straw was burned because it had strong fibre in it, so I had the idea to combine flax straw and fibre ‘waste’ with biopolymers to create a sustainable material that was strong and could replace conventional plastic.  

I conducted Research and Development at the University of Saskatchewan and created Flaxstic, a compostable alternative to conventional plastic. Then I needed a product. The iPhone 4 was the big product at that time; it seemed everyone was getting one, and most people were also getting plastic phone cases for their iPhones, which would last 100s or 1,000s of years and end up in landfill. This seemed wasteful, so we launched Pela Case in 2011 as the world’s first compostable phone case. 

How did Ag-West Bio support you?  

Ag-West helped connect me to mentors and workshops and provided the first commercial loan to help Pela grow into the company it has become today. 

Where is Pela Case now? 

Over 1 million people have now chosen Pela as a sustainable option over conventional plastic phone cases, amounting to over 4 million Pela products sold around the world, and preventing plastic waste from entering landfill. Pela also led us to developing Lomi, the Smart Waste appliance, to help keep food scraps out of landfill, as part of our mission to create a waste free future. 

How did you end up in your current position with Ag-West Bio? 

Thanks to the amazing team at Pela and Lomi, I now have the opportunity to focus on helping support and grow the start-up ecosystem in Saskatchewan, the same ecosystem that helped me along the way. It’s important to me to give back to the startup community in the same way that I was supported.  

Can you share how your values and Ag-West Bio’s values overlap? 

I believe we have world leading intellectual resources, human resources, corporate resources and natural resources in Saskatchewan, especially in agriculture and food biosciences. Together we can continue to bring more innovations to the global market, which aligns with Ag-West Bio’s vision for Saskatchewan to be a world leader in bringing agricultural bioscience innovation to commercialization, and mission to accelerate innovation and commercialize research in agricultural and food biosciences. 

What is your vision as the Director of Innovation and Business Development with Ag-West Bio? 

I believe we need entrepreneurs more than ever in Canada right now as they drive innovation, create jobs, and fuel economic growth by turning ideas into businesses that contribute to a sustainable and competitive economy. We have a strong history of amazing and innovative people in Saskatchewan, and I look forward to working together to support and grow more agri-food and biotech companies representing Saskatchewan and Canada on a global scale. 

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