CANORA, Sask. – Prairie farmers who grow flax mainly for linseed oil consider plant fibre a nemesis.
Occasionally, a paper company buys fibre from oilseed varieties to make cigarette papers and bible pages, but most farmers burn the trash.
Kimberly Clark, a giant paper company, and other firms have purchased baled flax straw in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in past years, but the market was never stable. Several farmer groups that searched for more stable markets, found only inconsistent buyers.
Farmers who supply the flax straw for Saskan Fibre, of Canora, were in one such group. Beginning in 1991, farmers in the co-op baled flax straw for Kimberly Clark and 10,000 tonnes went to eastern U.S. paper companies.
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“As farmers, we were just glad to be rid of the straw. Getting paid for it was too good to be true,” said Michael Yaholnitsky, chair of the board for Durafibre, a company that has since formed to manufacture and market flax straw.
“”We didn’t care what they did with it. Until they didn’t want it any more,” he said. The following year the company refused to take any straw.
This on-again, off-again relationship created a desire for a processing plant closer to home.
Randy Muderewich, a farmer from Sturgis, Sask., says he, Yaholnitsky and others in the area decided to see if they could do it themselves.
When the 250-member farmer co-operative that had been buying the flax straw joined with other farmers and business people from the Canora area to establish a community bond offering, Saskan Fibre was formed.
Locally, they raised $400,000, which allowed the new company to research ways of fibre processing to suit certain markets. They targeted the paper and industrial fibre industry, but company officials are tight-lipped about revealing too many details about their product and how it’s processed. Eventually, the group struck a deal with Cargill, a major processor of agricultural products.
Durafibre was formed in early 1995. The company is 50 percent held by Saskan and community bond holders and 50 percent by Cargill.
“We look after supplying the straw while Cargill will look after marketing the product,” said Yaholnitsky.
In previous years, the flax straw has meant a $500,000 annual impact to the community, said Yaholnitsky. He hopes Durafibre will provide even better returns.
The company plans a September startup with an initial staff of five. They expect to eventually need 10 employees for full production.
The next hurdle for flax fibre companies like Durafibre will be to convince the world market that natural fibres are as good or better than synthetics.
“It can be a hard sell when synthetics can roll the line hour after hour, day in and day out, always the same. Natural fibres aren’t that simple,” said Muderewich.
