Work continues in an attempt to build a sugar beet processing facility in Sarnia.
Mark Lumley, president of the newly formed Ontario Innovative Sugar Beet Processors Cooperative, says they're working with Bio Industrial Innovation Canada at the Sarnia-Lambton Campus of the Western University Research Park.
"We are, through the BIC, going to be doing a much more detailed feasibility study as well as engineering studies and the pricing that would be necessary to bring this to commercialization," says Lumley. "This follows a techno-economic modelling study that identified value-added products and business scenarios where a beet-based sugar value chain could be economically established."
One scenario is building a farmer-owned processing facility to supply bio-chemical manufacturers which use sugar as a feedstock.
Lumley says a commitment of about 30,000 acres of sugar beets would be needed to supply that project.
His hope is such a facility could be up and running by 2020.
BioAmber's Sarnia plant makes building-block chemical succinic acid from corn sugar, while London-based Comet Biorefining is eyeing Sarnia as a location for a facility that would extract sugar from corn and wheat by-products for use in biochemicals.
