Calgary, Alberta, Canada 26 June 2014 – FPInnovations and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (West Fraser) are proud to support the contribution of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) of $10 million, under the Investments in Forest Industry Transformation (IFIT) Program, to support the implementation of a commercial-scale lignin recovery process at West Fraser’s plant in Hinton, AB. Details of the contribution were revealed at a press conference held in Calgary, AB, in the presence of the Honourable Greg Rickford, Minister of Natural Resources.

West Fraser’s Hinton pulp mill will be the first in Canada to extract the lignin from its black liquor recovery stream, enabling it to produce the quantities needed to meet the supply requirements of end-users, using a proprietary process developed through past federal investments in R&D with FPInnovations and NORAM Engineering, called LignoForce. This project is the evolution of a transformative process that began with an investment in a similar LignoForce pilot-scale demonstration facility in Thunder Bay, ON, which was funded by NRCan’s Transformative Technologies Pilot Scale Demonstration Program, the Government of Ontario and the Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy (CRIBE).

West Fraser is an integrated wood products company producing lumber, wood chips, LVL, MDF, plywood, pulp and newsprint. The Company has operations in western Canada and the southern United States. West Fraser shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol: “WFT”.