Ground breaking, clean paper pulp technology to showcase at Open Day

Story published 5.11.08

BioRegional MiniMills, award-winning developer of small-scale, clean paper pulp technology, will showcase its industrial pilot mill at an open day in Manchester on 27th November.

The company is developing a way to use straw, rather than imported wood pulp, to make paper and at the same time uses its waste to power the process. The company will throw open the doors of the Ahlstrom Mill in Radcliffe, Manchester, where the pilot is based, in order to share findings with industry and promote its achievements to date. The event will be of interest to paper mill owners, and those with an interest in chemical and energy recovery and non-wood fibres.

Sue Riddlestone, founder and MD of BioRegional MiniMills said:
“We have come a very long way in the last twelve years and are now close to finalising a new paper pulp and small scale black liquor treatment process which will be of interest around the world. I hope that the paper industry will come to Radcliffe and see the future of paper manufacturing for itself.”

The MiniMill is extremely energy efficient, using 50% less energy than the latest conventional wood pulp mill and 90% less than traditional non-wood pulp mills. The technology reuses the organic material in the black liquor effluent to produce its own energy, and a closed loop chlorine-free system minimises pollution – traditionally a major disadvantage of straw-based paper manufacture. The key technology which will be on show is the small-scale black liquor recovery unit. This technology could revolutionise non-wood pulp production, and can also be used as a bolt-on in large scale mills to relieve bottlenecking in the recovery section.

BioRegional MiniMills has received investment and support from many agencies, including a DTI grant of £475k in 2006, and an equity investment in 2007 to prove the technology on an industrial scale. The company has also received funding and business support from Finance South East to further develop the industrial process. Finance South East, which supports SMEs in the region, funded BioRegional MiniMills from the PoCKeT Fund (Proof of Concept for Knowledge Transfer), financed by SEEDA. Finance South East invests at an early stage to de-risk businesses and prepare them for later stage funding from business angels and venture capital firms.

Finance South East’s CEO, Sally Goodsell, said:
“An Open Day is a perfect opportunity to show how far this technology has come and how close we are to clean, self-sufficient paper manufacture without wood-pulp imports.”

http://www.financesoutheast.com/