Northstar Clean Technologies (Northstar Clean Technologies Stock Quote, Charts, News, Analysts, Financials TSXV:ROOF) is raising the roof after meeting operational targets with its first asphalt shingle reprocessing facility, putting the company in a position to start scaling.
Northstar is a Vancouver-based clean tech company looking to create a market for “green asphalt” out of roof shingles that the construction industry has up until now been dumping in landfills — and paying a fee for in the process. Northstar has developed a proprietary Bitumen Extraction & Separation Technology (BEST) to turn turfed shingles into their component parts, liquid asphalt, fibre and aggregate, to be then resold into the market.
The company on Thursday announced that production has started at its Delta, BC, facility and is proceeding as planned, with the company aiming for daily production of up to six hours per day, for up to four or five days a week to generate feedstock production of between ten and 20 tonnes per day. Northstar said the end goal is a ramp-up to commercial production of between 50 and 75 tonnes per day.
So far, Northstar says the results are coming out exactly as expected.
“One of the critical metrics for any energy transition, ESG-based, clean technology company is demonstrating that its transformational technology actually works,” said Aidan Mills, Northstar President and CEO, in a press release.
“For Northstar to do that, we need to produce the end products from our facility at the specification we expected, in a repeatable manner. Therefore, we are very pleased to announce that the Empower Pilot Facility is not only producing exactly the end products we planned, but we have also initiated the production plan to do that repeatably,” Mills said.
Northstar is now touring around its product, taking samples of its green asphalt and aggregate to road construction companies, shingle manufacturers and other stakeholders. The company is also holding site visits over February and March to demonstrate its technology in operation.
Northstar says there are 13 million tonnes of asphalt coming off roof reshingling of buildings every year in Canada and the United States, with 90 per cent of it heading to landfills. The company plans to scale its business in a modular fashion, aiming to build facilities that can process up to 200 tonnes per day and to build multiple facilities across larger municipalities.
“Our objective is to maximize the applicability of what we believe is the ‘greenest’ asphalt in North America. In delivering this, we will be in the unique position where our reprocessing of asphalt shingles could not only divert approximately 40,000 tonnes of shingles per annum per facility currently sent to landfill, but these products can be applied in numerous markets. We believe we now have a sustainable, proven solution that can help solve North America’s asphalt waste problem,” Mills said.
Northstar Clean Technologies started trading on the TSX Venture Exchange last July after closing on an oversubscribed $12.3 private placement. Last fall, Northstar had an independent Life-Cycle Assessment of its Empower Facility completed which confirmed the facility as a “circular” renewable industry solution.
Disclosure: Northstar Clean Technologies is an annual sponsor of Cantech Letter.