WEYBURN — Saskatchewan-based Prairie Clean Energy (PCE) announced it has secured financing from Farm Credit Canada (FCC) and Weyburn Credit Union to support its flax processing facility in Weyburn.
Chief executive officer of PCE Mark Cooper is happy FCC and the Credit Union were willing to partner, as it is the culmination of a long period of talks.
Cooper says a gradual increase in production is planned between now and the end of next year. Starting this fall, the facility will handle five tons per hour of straw input, producing about two and a half tons of pellets per hour and about two tons of fiber per hour, with one crew working 40 hours a week.
He said about six people will be working there full time by the end of this month, and Cooper expects a total of 30 jobs will be created at this facility, along with 20 indirect jobs—local balers to collect the straw and truckers to move the straw and ship the product to customers—once it runs at full scale.
"We're excited to get into production. We have customers waiting for the product, and some products will start shipping in October, more in November, and I expect that folks across the prairies will be seeing our product in stores and available for them to purchase for their own use here before Christmas time, which is very exciting,” added Cooper.
Supply in the short term will be abundant as Prairie Clean Energy secured over 25,000 tonnes of flax straw from this year's harvest, along with more than 60,000 acres of flax straw under long-term right-of-first-refusal agreements with farmers across the prairies, mostly in Saskatchewan.
PCE's most common products include the fiber—marketed in Europe to companies that use it to make paper—and pellets, which are marketed in North America for use as cat litter or animal bedding.
Asked whether demand for flax could grow in the future, given the ongoing canola tariff issue with China, Cooper said it could.
"The bottom line for producers is that because of our presence in the market and because we can buy their straw, we improve the economics of flax growing by about 30 per cent, so we make it more attractive for farmers to grow flax and that's what we're here to do: add additional revenue streams for them and to see the acres of flax grow.
"We believe that current economics plus the fact that we now make the agronomics more attractive puts us in a position to see more flax acres growing next year, and we think that will happen each year that we're going to be going. We're going to be buying more and more straw, so this is the third year we've been buying; it's the most we've bought, and that'll be even more so next year. We feel very confident about the future of flax on the prairies, and I think producers are excited to have a spot to take this agricultural nuisance of theirs and put it to good productive use, and we're happy to make that happen in Weyburn.”
The total cost—between the facility, equipment and other items—is approximately $10 million.
