Building Thunder Bay's bio-economy: research and innovation centre steps toward reality.

Thunder Bay is building up its bio-economic research base with a new research institute.

Provincial Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson accepted a special task force report in December on the creation of a Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy, known as CRIBE.

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The centre will be the anchor of the city's bio-economy research and would focus on commercializing new environmentally-friendly and value-added materials from natural resources.

The project is a collaboration of Lake-head, Confederation College, FP Innovations and the ministry.

Lakehead University president Fred Gilbert is excited by the Minister's acceptance of the report and said there is tremendous potential. "It's really a matter of getting the right people on board to make things happen."

Gilbert, who served on the seven-person task force, said the centre will concentrate in producing more results in local industrial development than just on the academic research side.

The activities surrounding CRIBE will focus on conducting "test bed" research in the areas of new transportation fuels, fibres-fillers-composites, and chemicals.

Of the total $60 million price tag, the province has committed $25 million to cover staff salary, operating costs, plus seed money for projects. About $8 million of that is earmarked for a bio-refinery.

More investment is expected to come from the private sector in the form of cash or in-kind contributions.

The goal is to make products and processes with the "highest commercial value" that will benefit Northern Ontario.

To lead the project, Mike Willick, a former Ministry of Natural Resources' assistant deputy minister, has been hired as interim director to set up the organizational framework and hire staff.

Gilbert said Willick has a clear understanding of resource management and is key to setting up partnerships with industry.

"There are a number of potential partners across Northern Ontario where this may become a reality, and one would anticipate there would be an industrial partner interested to proceed along those lines."

Thunder Bay's pulp and paper mill, AbitibiBowater, has offered their site, staff and some fibre for the biorefinery. But Gilbert said nothing had been finalized.

The CRIBE offices will be located at Confederation College. Ultimately, the university wants to host them inside an even larger proposed proposed innovation centre on campus called NORD 21.

NORD 21 is being pitched to government funding agencies as a centre of excellence for research in the sustainable development of natural resources for the Northwest's emerging bio-economy.

Gilbert said Lakehead's funding application for NORD 21 went before the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) panel in early December for review.

He's hopeful of a positive recommendation, adding it'll be May or June before the university will know if they will be funded.

Their request for $13 million from CFI could be matched by Ontario's Ministry of Research and Innovation.

Other contributions could come from FedNor, the City of Thunder Bay, private business and the university.

The whole business case and feasibility of the proposed $40 million centre is based upon the quality of the value-added natural resources research that would be done.

"We have some strong human resources and some pretty desperate need for the research space at NORD 21 that it would provide."

While Thunder Bay will be a "facilitator" for this work, Gilbert expects technical expertise and other contributions to come from across Northern Ontario and other research collaborations in the province.

It will be up to Willick to tie into those pre-existing linkages, he said.

"We said very clearly as a task force that our expectation is that this will provide opportunities across the North."

www.lakeheadu.ca

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business