Last fall, Walter Heaman watched his flax straw go up in smoke.
Burning the straw was the best option he could find for getting rid of it. He didn’t need the straw for livestock bedding and no one came pounding on his door offering to buy it.
Heaman, who farms near Virden, Man., hopes that soon changes. He’s among the farmers interested in a processing plant for flax straw. Plans for the plant are being drawn up and the Virden area remains at the top of the list for possible locations.
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“There’s been real good interest,” said Heaman, who seeded 320 acres to flax last year. “It sounds like a good deal and it would get rid of the straw.”
The idea for the processing plant stems from a group of entrepreneurs in California. They formed Alpha Fibre Ltd. as the Canadian company that will advance the project.
Deborah Kern, president of Alpha Fibre, said the company has refined a way to convert flax straw into a fibre referred to as Fibex. The fibre can then be added to plastics to create a strong composite material, said Kern.
Scores of products can be made from the composite material, Kern said, citing plastic fencing, decks and automotive parts as examples.
“The potential product listing is endless,” she said in a telephone interview from Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Alpha Fibre would refine the straw into Fibex, she said, and then sell it to others who would blend it into plastic-based products. Many of the prospective buyers are in the United States, she said.
Alpha Fibre was lured to the Canadian Prairies by the amount of flax grown here. The company wants to tap into the flax straw supply of western Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan.
The $24 million (Cdn) plant could eventually employ about 40 people, Kern said. That doesn’t include the potential jobs created through baling and collection of straw.
Once in production, Alpha Fibre expects to use 85,000 tonnes of straw per year, an amount that could eventually increase.
No firm date has been set for the start of construction. Kern hopes to break ground this spring and begin collecting straw this fall.
“As soon as the field is harvested, we will want to go in and bale it. From that perspective, there will be very little headache to the farmer.”
Alpha Fibre wants to glean some of its knowledge from the Isobord plant at Elie, Man., where wheat straw gets converted into fibre board.
A co-operative set-up is key to the flax straw project.
“If (farmers) get some financial benefit, plus they get the straw off, I think it will work well for the producers,” said Dave Kalinchuk, economic development officer for the Virden-Wallace area.
Virden is a preferred site because of its access to highways and a main rail line and because it sits in a flax-growing region. The community also offers a good water supply and cheap sources of power, including hydro and natural gas.
“Our American cousins are starting to realize there are things they can do here and they can save 40 to 45 cents on the dollar,” observed Kalinchuk.
The project would need up to 200,000 acres of flax straw per year to be viable.
“There probably is sufficient flax straw available,” said Daryl Domitruk, a land management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture. “Whether producers want to sell it and for what price, that is the big question.”
Manitoba now has two main buyers of flax straw. Ecusta Fibres Ltd. and Schweitzer-Mauduit Canada Inc. both extract raw fibre from the straw before they bale it and export it to the U.S. That fibre is then converted into products such as cigarette papers and the paper used to make Bibles.
Ecusta and Schweitzer-Mauduit used 200,000 tonnes of flax straw in 1997. The product they exported to the U.S. was worth $26 million.
Manitoba grows from 400,000 to 750,000 acres of flax a year, which represents about 40 percent of Canadian production. Saskatchewan accounts for the bulk of flax grown elsewhere in Canada.
Another issue that Alpha Fibre will have to contend with is the distance between the flax fields and the processing plant. The Isobord venture collects most of its wheat straw within an 80-kilometre radius of the Elie plant, said Domitruk. Alpha Fibre might have to cover a wider area to feed its plant on the Prairies.
“I think a devil’s advocate may look at that aspect.”
Domitruk noted that alternatives to wood products have gained a toehold in the marketplace.
“It would be nice if Manitoba became the home of the non-wood fibre industry in Canada. We have an opportunity to do that.”
