The world’s biggest maker of tobacco rolling papers has picked up federal and provincial funding to upgrade and expand its flax fibre processing plants in south-central Manitoba.
Schweitzer-Mauduit Canada (SMC) will get $385,000 under from the federal/provincial Advancing Agri-Innovation program, another $100,000 through the province’s Technology Commercialization program and $150,000 through Canada’s National Research Council for the projects. SMC will put up $485,000.
The expansions and upgrades, worth an estimated $1.12 million in all, will be at SMC’s flax plants at Carman, about 70 km southwest of Winnipeg, and at Winkler, about 40 km south of Carman.
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The plants process about 100,000 tonnes of flax straw per year, sourced and shipped in round bales from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota.
Of that, about 30,000 tonnes of tow (bast fibre for pulp and paper) are shipped to U.S.-based Schweitzer-Mauduit’s specialty paper mill at Spotswood, N.J., about 50 km south of Newark, for further processing into rolling papers.
The remaining 50,000-60,000 tons of flax shives are used to make horse bedding, soil erosion control products and biofuels.
Flax fibre is also considered a substitute for fiberglass and other petroleum-based products in some applications to help manufacturers lower their carbon footprint.
The company also runs a mobile processing facility at Treherne, about 65 km southwest of Portage la Prairie.
Once completed, the expansions at Winkler and Carman are expected to allow SMC to “develop new products and access new markets, providing additional revenue and creating new value chain businesses and jobs for Manitoba.”
SCM’s planned shive screening facility, for example, is expected to create five jobs and spur development of “fibre-based, value-added businesses in the biocomposite, nutraceutical and textile sectors.”
“With this new equipment we will be producing a line of renewable, sustainable biomaterials to serve the growing bio-economy throughout North America,” SMC vice-president Greg Archibald, who oversees Schweitzer-Mauduit International’s Canadian division, said Friday in a federal/provincial release.
Headquartered in the Atlanta area, Schweitzer-Mauduit has operated as a stand-alone publicly-traded company since 1995, when Kimberly-Clark spun off its tobacco-related operations in the U.S., Canada and France.
