Minas Basin Pulp and Power on cutting edge of 'green technology

BY FRED LAWRENCE

The Hants Journal

NovaNewsNow.com

Nearly a century after founder R.A. Jodrey started to produce electricity to power the Hantsport pulp mill and make paper, Minas Basin Pulp and Power is trading very healthy stocks on the global market and leading the industry in the transition to green sources of electricity and recycling technology.

COO Scott Travers has been at the helm since 1996 and most of the technological changes have happened under his watch. Recently, the company won the 2007 Progressive Manufacturing 50 Award for “outstanding achievement using advanced technology in heat recovery.”

For a comparatively small company to garner such an award against hundreds of competitors throughout North America is proof the new system has transformed the mill into a major player in the 'green revolution.'

The majority of large companies operating in Canada are owned by U.S. conglomerates. Minas Basin Pulp and Power has gone against the grain to remain proudly Canadian.

“We are indeed Canadian-owned and, ironically, we recently bought an American company in Newton Falls, New York,” Travers said. The U.S. plant is very similar to the Hantsport company yet diminutive in size by comparison. “To see the Canadian and Nova Scotian flags flying at Newton Falls is quite something,” he added.

Travers got his start in Hantsport two days after completing his degree in mechanical engineering, “so I'm a lifer here,” he chuckles.

One of his first moves was to close the pulp mill to logs and concentrate on recycling paper products instead of cutting trees to feed the mill. “We had a vision then, which is still very much the same today, of becoming self-sufficient and reaching a goal of recycling 100 per cent of everything that’s used to produce our paper products.”

Green before it was fashionable

Travers's ideas in the 1990s were ahead of their time. “We were green before green was fashionable,” he said. “We saw it (green) as a marketable niche that few others were even considering at that time. I think that gave us an advantage because we started very early in the game switching how we operate. Why cut down trees and grind them up for pulp when we can recycle what’s already there, divert incredible amounts away from landfills and greatly reduce our corporate footprint and still be profitable?”

As a result of their recycling efforts, Minas Basin Pulp and Paper is sparing 1.5 million trees annually and helping the county and many other areas in Atlantic Canada to eliminate their problem of waste paper. “So switching the focus to recycling is now considered the responsible thing to do for any company.”

The mission statement is profitability through people, quality and dedication to the environment. “We couldn't go back to cutting down trees if we wanted to because it goes completely against the grain of our mission here,” Travers said.

The challenge of operating on 100 per cent recycled products to provide power for the huge factory is substantial. “We’re experiencing competition from China and other areas of the world where their labour and production costs are much lower than here. One way we can remain competitive is promoting our products as Canadian, and knowing that paper is heavy and it costs a lot to ship.

“We’re right here and can ship products at a lower cost, but the threat posed by countries like China keeps us one step ahead and always looking for ways to be more innovative while remaining cost-effective,” Travers said.

“We've lost a lot of our industrial jobs to China; even Wal-Mart is now part of the Asian chain that’s a major competitor in the global marketplace, so we have to try and keep ahead of the competition. That's where innovation and technology come into play in a big way.”

Travers said $1.5 million was recently invested for the 'wet' end of the plant to produce better paper more efficiently in the hope of garnering a larger share of the North American market.

Shared values, employee buy-in

A major turnaround in company politics has ensured employees now feel more valued. Travers said when he first started he saw the company operating “in a very autocratic manner, and I knew we had to change that to include employees, value their input and create an atmosphere where people want to come to work because they believe in what they do, not because they have to.”

Travers said that 'shared values' are essential to keeping employees in this new age of worker demand, particularly in Alberta, where the economy is red hot. “We treat our employees as internal customers. It didn't happen overnight, but we tried to create the preferred workplace for Nova Scotians and to-date we’ve lost only two employees to the (Alberta) oil patch.”

Travers said pay scales are comparable to salaries in the West and workers, he said, are happy to have a say in their schedules and company policy.

Relying solely on recycling technology isn't the company's only accomplishment. Through 'green' efforts, a tremendous amount of waste has been diverted from provincial landfills and is being used as fuel for the plant. “We’re currently diverting around 250,000 cubic metres from the landfills annually and have decreased our pollution output to eliminate 2,300 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases, and we’re by no way done yet. We want to continue becoming as clean as we can possibly become,” Travers said. “How many other mills such as this can say they’re actually not leaving an environmental footprint through their operations?”

Annual payroll of $10 million

The plant generates 200 direct full-time jobs with another 500 indirect positions such as trucking and waste haulers. The annual payroll is around $10 million dollars and in a small town like Hantsport, that represents a major contribution to the local economy.

Current plans include increasing the production of electricity, something the company has been doing since the 1920s. “We’re investing in wind and tidal power technology and have partnered with ATEC (Atlantic Tidal Energy Corporation – based in Windsor) to become even more efficient by producing green electricity,” Travers said.

“Our big concern is energy. With global resources declining at an alarming rate and the problems burning fossil fuels cause, we want to be leaders in developing new ways to make electricity that doesn’t pollute the planet.”

Two sites, at South Canoe Lake and along the Blomidon coast, are being assessed for wind turbines. “We're the only paper mill in Canada that’s home-grown and operated, and certainly the only one with a real desire to clean up the environment,” he said.