A Regina company is working with a Chinese food conglomerate to explore the feasibility of jointly building a 600,000 tonne canola crushing plant in Western Canada.
Clean Power Concepts of Regina and Chongqing Grain Group of China have a memorandum of understanding under which the Chinese company would fund the construction and the Canadian company would design, oversee construction and manage the plant.
The plant would be about three quarters of the size of the new crushing plants at Yorkton, Sask. It is anticipated that the minimum investment by the joint partners would be $70-$90 million.
Clean Power’s operating company General Bio Energy was formerly called Canadian Green Fuels. It operates a small commercial oilseed crushing and processing facility in Regina that produces biodiesel and lubricants, as well as nutraceuticals and food. It can produce 19.7 million liters of oil annually.
A location for the new joint venture has not been selected.
The companies said in a news release that the Chinese company would take all the oil produced by the new plant and Clean Power would take all the meal.
Chongqing Grain has about 21,500 employees and assets worth about $920 million, the release said.
In December, the two companies signed a long term letter of intent for Clean Power to supply Chongqing with up to 3,000 tonnes a month of crude canola oil. At first, the Regina plant will contribute to meet this demand. The crude oil will be shipped to Chongqing facilities in China to be refined.
