Project Profile Pipeline to prosperity Biox provides biodiesel to neighbouring Shell distribution centre. LivinG By Andrew Macklin had successfully negotiated a deal to lease from the Hamilton Port Authority a four-acre site in the industrial section of Hamil-ton Harbour, the site where they are located today. One of the challenges posed by the Hamilton Harbour property was that the land was a brownfield site in need of rec-lamation. The company had to clean the site of all contaminants, a process that took nearly a year, in order to establish a clean soil baseline and mitigate the liabilities of past contamination. The company began construction of its first commercial-scale facility in 2005. Construction and commissioning were completed in March 2007 with a targeted production of 67 million litres per year. the biox ProCess What sets the Biox process apart from others is its proprietary co-solvent technology, which allows for the use of virtually any lipid-based feedstock including free fatty acids while achieving One of the primary benefits of being located at Hamilton Harbour is the strong road, rail and marine infrastructure, which gives Biox multiple options for moving biodiesel to its customers. in the United Kingdom and Germany in the 1990s gave Tim Haig an appreciation of the need for renewable energy here in North America. Haig was setting up wind farms, and, by the time he returned to Canada, he was convinced that Canadians needed to develop our own renewable energy resources. His first job back in the country led him to meet Kevin Norton and introduced him to the idea of biodiesel production here in Canada. Realizing the potential benefit for Canada’s energy mar-ket, Haig and Norton teamed up to develop the technology at the bench-lab scale. After being introduced to a fledgling technology being developed at the University of Toronto in 1999, and with a bench-lab-scale technology operational, Haig, Norton and an Angel investor officially incorporated Biox. By way of testing the efficacy of the chemistry at a larger scale than that of the bench lab, Biox built a one million litre per year pilot plant in Oakville in 2001. With the pilot plant running successfully, Haig and Norton sought a permanent location in the Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. By the end of 2004 they Canadian BIOMASS 21
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