Atlantic BioCorp Ltd. will be starting a biomaterials processing operation this year in St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador, that will process shrimp and crab shell waste into bioproducts.
It will be the first industrialized operational-sized biomaterials processing facility in Canada.
“We’re just really excited and thankful for all the support we’ve been given; the community, the municipality, the province more generally. You can’t do anything alone and we’re really thankful for the help to get this far,” said Dante Enewold, CEO of Atlantic BioCorp Ltd.
Atlantic BioCorp Ltd. will be converting an existing industrial building, configuring the interior of the building to accommodate processing equipment required for the conversion of shrimp shell waste into high-value, low-carbon products, including protein hydrolysate, chitin, chitosan and calcium-based coproducts.
The facility is situated approximately 80 feet from one of the province’s largest shrimp processing plants, allowing direct transfer of raw material from the adjacent processing operation.
“We’re in a turnkey building pretty much. It was a cold storage building here in St. Anthony. Start up will be pretty quick. We’re looking to catch the start of the shrimp season this year,” said Enewold.
A pilot-scale project for now, Atlantic BioCorp plans to process 1,000-tonnes of shrimp shell waste this year and there is room to expand.
“At the end of the day, there is 28,000 tonnes of crustacean waste produced each and every year in N.L. If all goes well, the sky’s the limit. We’re aiming for all of it,” said Enewold.
Enewold estimated production will probably grow by about 5,000 tonnes a year. “The St. Anthony region produces about 90 per cent of the shrimp shell waste on the island, within a two-hour radius.”
Atlantic BioCorp currently employs five people, but will be looking for another five to 10 this year, said Enewold, estimating the workforce will grow to 100 to 150 once it can take the whole 28,000 tonnes.
Markets for the biomaterials that will be produced by Atlantic BioCorp “really runs the gamut,” said Enewold. “The agricultural market, cosmetics, biomedical pharmaceuticals all the way to high end pharmaceutical drug delivery systems.”
As it is now, China dominates the market producing about 90 per cent of the global total, said Enewold. “There are some small players out of Europe and one down in the U.S. We’ve done a couple hundred customer interviews at this point and all the customers are fed up. The product is not being very good, they can’t get the consistency and customized ability that they really need. There’s a pretty strong demand for western origin, Canadian-made product and we’re going to provide that.”
At the St. Anthony facility, shrimp shell material will be received, preprocessed and subjected to primary bioconversion steps as designed in the proprietary MCE cascade using low-toxicity inputs, including citric acid and food-grade enzymes. These steps will produce protein hydrolysate, chitin and a calcium-based coproduct. Protein hydrolysate and calcium coproducts will be finalized on-site.
Major physical features within the facility will include a dedicated preprocessing area for receiving, grinding and washing raw material; 3,000-litre stainless steel tanks; filtration and centrifuge systems and product drying equipment. The operation incorporates a closed-loop water recirculation system, developed in collaboration with Fleming College’s water and wastewater innovation program, to minimize water consumption and effluent volume. An enclosed loading and unloading area are incorporated within the building to contain material handling activities.
While processing at the St. Anthony site will include material receiving, preprocessing and primary bioconversion steps required to produce intermediate and finished biomaterial outputs, some chitin produced at the St. Anthony facility will be transported off-site to the Marine Institute in St. John’s for further conversion to chitosan under a third-party contract manufacturing service agreement.
Atlantic BioCorp is the lead industrial partner in the Marine Institute and ACOA-supported public–private partnership From Ocean to Opportunity: Circular Economy Models for Newfoundland and Labrador’s Fisheries Resources with the St. Anthony facility serving as the primary demonstration hub for this initiative.
Enewold said Atlantic BioCorp has been doing a lot of research and Development at Memorial University over the last two years.
Atlantic BioCorp registered its biomaterials processing operation for Environmental Assessment on Jan. 16. Public comment was accepted until Feb. 20. Chris Tibbs, Minister of Environment, Conservation and Climate Change, released the project from further environmental assessment on March 6.
