The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) has released a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind study that examines a wide range of options for renewal of the Canadian forest products industry.
The Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) has released a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind study that examines a wide range of options for renewal of the Canadian forest products industry.
“The study, The Future Bio-pathways Project, focuses on the triple bottom line: clean energy, high employment, and economic recovery. The results are clear -integrating the production of bio-products and bio-energy into the existing industry is a winner on all fronts,” says Avrim Lazar, president and CEO of FPAC. The Future Bio-pathways Project involved more than 65 Canadian experts in fields as diverse as bio-technology, investment banking, and carbon pricing. “The study shows that the best path forward is to integrate; to take pulp and paper enterprises and to add bio-energy and bio-chemicals,” says FPAC’s vice-president, economics and regulatory affairs, Catherine Cobden.
She suggests that full fractionation, or full bio-refining, has emerged as the best opportunity for Canadian pulp and paper producers. “It really diversifies the product mix, into bio-energy and bio-chemicals.”
The charts at right are taken from the Future Bio-pathways report. They show return on capital employed (ROCE) for various traditional and emerging forest products. (Note: Twenty-seven technologies were studied. The charts show only those technologies for which the ROCE is above the cost of capital.)
The study results also illustrate how government policies can favor certain technologies, Cobden notes. The high ROCE for pellet businesses in Ontario, for example, is related to provincial government policy.
PPC
A summary of the Future Bio-pathways report is available
at www.fpac.ca.
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