Minister Aggelonitis announces $4 million investment for Woodland Biofuel Inc.’s new ethanol pilot plant

[Left to Right: local Liberal and winner of Burlington Citizen of the Year Award Brian Heagle, BPLA President John Boich and Minister Sophia Aggelonitis]

BURLINGTON, (April 9, 2010) – Sophia Aggelonitis, Minister of Consumer Services and MPP, Hamilton Mountain announced that Ontario will invest $4 million in Woodland Biofuels, Inc through the Innovation Demonstration Fund. The announcement was made at Burlington’s Zeton Inc., where the pilot plant components will be manufactured and later installed at the Bioindustrial Innovation Centre, at the University of Western Ontario’s Sarnia-Lambton Research Park.

        The plant is expected to be completed in 12 to 15 months and, if successful, will create 585 full-time jobs over the next five years, said Aggelonitis. In its early stages, however, the pilot plant will create 35 full and part time jobs as Woodland seeks to improve its ability to produce cellulosic ethanol. The company’s fully patented process uses locally available materials such as wood waste to produce this cleaner fuel which can be mixed with gasoline for use in automobiles.

        “This is another example of how the province is helping transform great ideas into good jobs for Ontario families,” said the Minister. “And it supports the McGuinty government’s new five-year Open Ontario Plan to build new opportunities for growth and jobs – a plan that aims to create an Ontario that is open to new ideas… new opportunities… and a new world.”

        The share of ethanol in global gasoline type fuels is seven per cent, a level expected to rise as more countries adopt ethanol as a way to curb carbon emissions and cut back their appetite for fossil fuels. Woodland’s process can produce Cellulosic ethanol from agricultural wastes, organic and industrial wastes, contaminated waste wood and forestry wastes, unlike other processes that require using valuable food sources to produce the fuel.

RON DENNIS