KEARNEY \u2014 A New Zealand company that processes biomass into a filler for the plastics industry is moving its headquarters to Kearney.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially it will be just distillers grains\u201d used as the biomass, said KAAPA Executive Director Marge Lauer, \u201cbut there have been successful trials using such things as sugar beet pulp and rice hulls.\u201d Testing likely will be done on corn stover at Kearney\u2019s Xylemer BioProducts Inc. manufacturing plant.<\/p>\n
The patented technologies developed by parent company LignoTech Developments Limited are based on using high-pressure steam. The Kearney plant will be its U.S. subsidiary and initial production plant.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, KAAPA investment funds have been created to purchase $9 million in shares, totaling about a one-third interest in the company. KAAPA will have two of the six members of the board of directors.<\/p>\n
There are public meetings scheduled Sunday and Tuesday at the Kearney Holiday Inn for people interested in more information about the project. Lauer said one fund has been established for qualified KAAPA members who have paid the $250 annual dues and a second fund is for other qualified Nebraska investors.<\/p>\n
Federal regulation changes are allowing a KAAPA cooperative-generated investment opportunity to be offered to a wider population for the first time. Lauer said the minimum investment is $12,000 and then there are tiers for larger amounts.<\/p>\n
Lauer said Xylemer BioProducts has an option on a 12,000-square-foot existing building on East 39th Street for which some renovations will be needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing will be to order equipment … which will take six or seven months to manufacture and receive,\u201d she said, adding that the plan is to have the plant operational in the fourth quarter of 2014.<\/p>\n
The Xylemer BioProducts plant manager will be in Kearney by April, and it is expected that 12 new jobs will be created.<\/p>\n
An office will remain in New Zealand where 10-year-old LignoTech Developments Limited will continue to hold the patents for the process that will use high-pressure steam and chemicals to transform wet distillers grains, a co-product of ethanol production, into a fine powder that can be mixed with other components to form resins.<\/p>\n
Lauer said the company\u2019s pilot plant in New Zealand burned down a year ago.<\/p>\n
It was where wood initially was used to test the process. Then it was determined that dry distillers grains imported from the United States, including some from Nebraska, worked better.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe original inventor of this was a steam engineer who worked with commercial buildings, big old boilers,\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
The late Andrew Rafferty found a way to use high-pressure steam to change the molecular structure of biomass. \u201cIt basically breaks open the cells of living materials,\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
The Kearney plant will have a closed-loop system from which the only emission is steam. \u201cThe finer the powder, the better the product,\u201d Lauer said. \u201c…So we will try to capture every particle because it has value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rafferty experimented with wood almost exclusively for the first five years before working with other biomasses, including distillers grains that had to be in the dry form to import. \u201cIn a full-sized plant, they\u2019ll use the wet (distillers),\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not know if there will be a long-term relationship between the plant and KAAPA Ethanol,\u201d she added, acknowledging the several other area ethanol plants that could provide distillers grains.<\/p>\n
Lauer described the Kearney Xylemer plant as an initial production facility that will process about 8 million pounds of fine powder annually that will be sold \u2014 there already is a letter of intent to buy in hand \u2014 to resin compounders. They custom mix powdered components and turn them into pellets for plastic industry buyers.<\/p>\n
Lauer said the company\u2019s goal is to build a full-size 40-million-pounds-a-year plant in a state such as Ohio that is closer to the end users, but still has ethanol production sufficient to provide the distillers grains required.<\/p>\n
A full-sized plant may have technologies to reuse the steam to create a fully closed-loop system.<\/p>\n
Once such a plant is commissioned, the Kearney facility would continue to test the high-pressure steam process on other biomass products such as corn and soybean stover, sugar beat pulp, and maybe nut shells, Lauer said.<\/p>\n
When asked about any potential impacts to the critical central Nebraska balance between corn, distillers grains and cattle, she said maintaining that balance is another reason Xylemer officials may look farther east for sites to build full-size plants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the cattle here and a market for distillers … so it\u2019s important that we (Xylemer) don\u2019t compete with the cattle producers,\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
Some KAAPA members already have invested in Laurel BioComposite LLC and it was through that 4-year-old relationship that the opportunity blossomed to bring the Xylemer BioProducts plant to Kearney.<\/p>\n
Lauer said the Laurel plant uses a different chemical-only process to turn biomass into a product for the plastics industry and its investors decided to \u201cfollow a proprietary path\u201d with that technology, rather than do something with LignoTech Developments Limited.<\/p>\n
KAAPA officials stayed in touch with the New Zealand company. \u201cWe wanted them to do more product development before we did more with them and that\u2019s exactly what they have done the past two years,\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
She added that because demand for the biomass-produced products is so great, the two Nebraska plants won\u2019t compete for the same market. \u201cThey both could make millions of pounds a year and not dent the market,\u201d Lauer said.<\/p>\n
The end product from the Kearney plant will be rated class A, which Lauer said means, \u201cno pits and no blemishes so that it\u2019s paintable\u201d and also that it has a low moisture intake.<\/p>\n
A product that provides smooth, lightweight finishes is attractive to the transportation industry for fuel-efficient benefits and aesthetics, she said.<\/p>\n
Among the attractive qualities on a list made by Xylemer officials are: It is 55 percent to 75 percent lighter than currently used traditional fillers, which can help in meeting fuel and emission standards; consistent performance; flows well into molds and forms; can qualify for federal bio-preferred programs; and can be produced in powder or pellet forms for end users.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on the application, it can also make things stronger,\u201d Lauer said, explaining that the attributes depend on what the Xylemer powder is blended with and at what proportion.<\/p>\n
She said the company\u2019s claims have been confirmed by two independent labs. Scion is a Crown Research facility that is part of the national laboratory system in New Zealand, and Reichhold in North Carolina is one of the largest resin manufacturers in the world that does independent resin product verifications.<\/p>\n
Message to investors<\/strong> When asked for her message to potential investors, she said, \u201cIt\u2019s not very often that you can have an opportunity to invest on the ground floor of a company in your community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Iowa, New Zealand’s Xylemer BioProducts is going to open a production facility in Kearney to prod…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[3854],"class_list":["post-18467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-lignotech-developments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18467"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=18467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLauer said federal regulations define who will be qualified to invest in this latest KAAPA-initiated venture.<\/p>\n