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Weekly UpdatesThunder Bay is building its own bio-economic base with a research centre at Lakehead University.
A Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy, known as CRIBE, was the recommendation of a special task force to determine how $25 million in provincial funding would be best spent.
The task force's 15-page report was accepted by Provincial Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson on Dec. 15. The centre will be the anchor of the city's bio-economy research and would focus on commercializing new environmentally-friendly fuels, composites and chemicals.
The CRIBE offices would be located within a larger proposed innovation centre on the university campus called NORD 21.
Research and innovation will focus on finding 'green' substitutes for materials and fuels used in Ontario industry by using all parts of trees and other forest material.
The goal is to make products and processes with the "highest commercial value" that will benefit Northern Ontario.
Research will be built around a $16-million pilot bio-refinery initiative which will be a "test bed" for products for products in transportation fuels and energy, fibres/fillers/composites and chemicals.
About $8 million of the provincial money should be earmarked for that project. The remainder will come from other government funding agencies and the private sector.
Talks have started with. Abitibi-Bowater, which has offered their Thunder Bay mill site, staff and fibre for the bio-refinery testing.
"Investing in research and innovation will strengthen and diversify our resource-based economy and help ensure Ontario's abundant forest resources continue to provide a sustainable future for our forest industry and the communities that depend on it," said Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro, in a Dec. 15 statement.
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