Tag Archives: Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program

It’s now official, the CelluForce NCC plant has been inaugurated

I’ve been writing (July 16, 2010 posting) about the nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) manufacturing plant in Windsor, Québec since construction was first announced. CelluForce’s (a joint partnership between Domtar and FPInnovations) new plant was officially opened by Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. (For anyone curious about NCC [derived from wood cellulose] and/or CelluForce, there are more details in my Dec. 15, 2011 posting where I mentioned that the plant was then operational.)

This NCC plant represents a major investment from the Government of Canada and the Province of Québec. The latest funds from these two levels of government are noted here in the Jan. 26, 2012 CelluForce news release (you may have to scroll down to find it),

The Canadian and Québec governments made a significant contribution to the financing of the $36 million plant with $23.2 million coming from Natural Resources Canada (Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program and Transformative Technologies Program) and $10.2 million from Québec’s Natural Resources and Wildlife Department.

If my arithmetic is right, those numbers mean that someone (Domtar?) provided $2.5M to make the total $36M. (It almost seems that Domtar might be a junior partner in this endeavour.)

There are some grand plans for both the plant and NCC,

CelluForce is ramping up its production of NCC with a target of reaching a 1,000 kg (1 metric ton) per day production rate in 2012. Trials integrating NCC into the manufacturing process of different products are currently taking place through technical collaboration agreements between CelluForce and 15 companies based in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia in four main industrial sectors: paints and coatings, films and barriers, textiles, and composites.

As I noted in my Jan. 27, 2012 posting about ArboraNano’s appearance at an international symposium on nanotechnology and its economic impacts, NCC seems to be on the international agenda and, at this point, Canadians are world leaders in this area of research.

In the interests of being comprehensive regarding the Canadian NCC production scene, there is a demonstration plant in Alberta slated to produce up to 100kg of NCC/day, as I noted in my July 5, 2011 posting. For some reason (I’m guessing it has something to do with regional rivalries), the two groups are resolutely ignoring each other.