ELIE, Man. – Taking a draw from his pipe, Bryan Nuss recalled how a stubble field once lay where 132 workers now are constructing what’s believed to be the world’s largest strawboard plant.
Today, about 1,000 piles driven down 14 metres to bedrock are supporting the framework of this closely watched project by Toronto-based Isobord Enterprises Inc.
Nuss is construction manager for Stone and Webster, a multinational firm on Fortune 500’s list of construction and engineering companies.
He’s making sure the building is closed in by early November, and is ready to be commissioned next July.
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The $142 million, 19,350 sq. metre plant is expected to be in full production by Jan. 8, 1999.
The sight of bricks and mortar just off the Trans-Canada highway is turning some skeptics into believers, said Isobord’s vice-president of engineering.
“It’s moved from sort of a skeptical point of view early in the game,” said Steve Flannery. “The credibility gap has certainly closed. People are paying a lot of attention.”
It still takes imagination and the enthusiastic descriptions of engineers for visitors to visualize how the plant will operate.
White plastic tubes sprout up from the ground around the site, marking where electrical connections will travel through buried conduits.
The plant will pump out 11.7 million sq. metres of 19-millimetre-thick board per year, at costs comparable to particleboard plants using wood. Nuss said 36 hours worth of straw will be kept in a bunker. A conveyor belt will carry bales into the plant to be chopped, dried and refined.
Dow Chemical will ship the resin to hold the straw together from Texas. The resin makes the board water resistant and is inert and non-toxic, unlike the urea formaldehyde binder used in 90 percent of all particleboard.
Pressure and heat
Twenty-four hours a day, a mat of the straw-resin mix will be fed between two 39-m long steel belts which use pressure and heat to force the straw into 19 mm of board.
“The press is the gem of the whole operation, a real sweet piece of equipment,” said Nuss.
During the night shift, it’s expected to take only eight workers to keep the plant going.
In total, the plant will employ about 110 people.
Even before the plant is running, Isobord has sold 80 percent of its first five years of production, mostly to two large cabinet and furniture manufacturers in the Midwest United States.
Isobord hopes to market the remaining production into niche markets with higher returns. The company wants to capitalize on the environmental aspects of the product.
In 1993, company officials predicted the plant would be in full production the following year. But Flannery said some false starts with financing drew out the process. Eventually, money came together.
The company got $35 million in equity from four venture capital funds and Isostraw Manitoba Limited Partnership, made up of farmers and other local investors.
Financial institutions put up $60 million in loans. The Manitoba government gave Isobord a $15 million repayable loan, and the Farm Credit Corporation put up a $12 million mortgage.
