Dow Chemical Canada has stopped seeking buyers for its strawboard plant at Elie, Man., and will instead sell the plant’s press equipment to foreign buyers, the Manitoba Co-operator reports.
The Jan. 3 issue of the farmers’ newspaper quotes a spokesperson for the chemical company as saying the plant’s pressboard and associated machinery has been sold and is scheduled to be removed this month, destined for an unnamed buyer outside Canada.
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“After a long and protracted effort and a lot of expense, we were not going to be able to find a purchaser to operate the facility as a going concern,” Dow spokesperson Mimi Long told Co-operator reporter Ron Friesen.
Dow will sell the property and building separately and maintain personnel at the plant in the meantime. The company is also “developing a plan to deal with the straw inventory in an environmentally friendly manner,” Long told the newspaper.
Isobord opened in 1998, buying and gathering cereal straw from local farmers. The straw was blended with resin (supplied by Dow) to make particle board for use in kitchen cabinets and furniture. Isobord went into receivership in 2001, after which Dow took over and operated the facility until late 2005.
Long stacks of large square bales, varying in condition, still line the Trans-Canada Highway on company-owned and other privately-held land at Elie, about 50 km west of Winnipeg. A farmers’ co-operative, whose members for a per-tonne fee allowed Isobord to bale and truck the straw off their harvested fields, reported that it has since written off $1 million in receivables from the Isobord bankruptcy.
“It’s either burn it or work it in,” Bill Ridgeway, president of the Straw Producers Co-operative, said of Dow’s current options for dealing with the straw.
A local economic development official is quoted as saying two Manitoba groups had tried to communicate with Dow to do a deal to buy the plant but could not “penetrate the wall.” An Ontario company, World BioFibre Technology Inc., told the newspaper it’s still in the hunt to buy the Elie facility and will keep pressing forward for a deal “until the truck leaves the yard with the press on it.”
