SCALING UP CONFERENCE COMES TO OTTAWA Members of the world’s bio-industry flocked to Ottawa this past November to attend the inaugural Scaling Up Confer-ence at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. The event’s founder Jeff Passmore, CEO of the Passmore Group, welcomed attend-ees to the conference and discussed the potential industry growth across Canada. “This is an enormous opportunity,” he told the crowd, adding that if developed sustainably, the bioeconomy can grow jobs across the country while protecting the environment simultaneously. He said collaboration between the public and private sectors is key to ensuring a suc-cessful bioeconomy in Canada. Passmore identified many of the risks that come with growing the bioeconomy, including technology scale-up risk; supply change risk; entrenched competitors with sunked costs; an uncertain policy environment; high capex and expensive debt financing and uncertain returns on investment. “Despite the challenges, Canada cannot ignore its extensive biomass resources,” he said. “We have 160 million acres of crop and pasture land… There’s no shortage of biomass in the country, but it does have to be developed sustainably.” RENEWABLE CHEMICALS MARKET Rina Singh, managing director of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s (BIO) industrial and environmental sec-tion, discussed realizing the potential of the global renewable chemical market. She said that growth in the renewable chemicals industry is “explosive” and that by 2020 global sales will range between $375 billion to $400 billion. SCALING UP Jeff Passmore welcomes attendees to the first Scaling Up Conference in Ottawa. Brian Foody, CEO of Iogen Corporation – a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol – discussed scaling up cellulosic biofuels and the challenges that many companies experience when scaling up their tech-nologies. He said it took many years and hundreds of millions of dollars before his company hit its targets and scaled up com-mercially, and that its been a struggle for many of the big players around the world, not just small start-ups. He said that it’s vital that the investors remain confident in the market a company is tapping into and that they need to have the confidence to see things through to the end. “It’s super critical that people believe what your after is real,” he said. “Confi-dence is the mother of investment.” Find more coverage of these events at www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca. WELLONS GROUP OF COMPANIES Biomass Fired Thermal Energy Systems Thermal oil for kiln heat and ORC electrical generation • Steam and hot water systems • District energy systems • Hot gas generation for rotary fiber dryers • Combined Heat and Power • 19087 -96th Avenue, Surrey, BC V4N 3P2 Tel: 604 888-0122 Toll Free: 1-888-211-6077 E-mail: [email protected] 2155 rue Bombardier, Ste-Julie, QC J3E 2J9 Tél : 450 922-3117 Courriel : [email protected] FEI C ORP www.wellons.ca www.wellonsfei.ca “Total Projects from Concept to Completion. The Wellons Service Edge” Wellons Group of Companies Ad_01-2017.indd 1 CBM_Wellons_JanFeb17_CSA.indd 1 2017-01-25 Canadian BIOMASS 11:07 AM 2017-01-26 7:09 AM 25
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