Chairman Maloney, I am very pleased to appear before you and your committee today.
In my capacity as chief consultant for GreenNano Technologies, I will give a brief description of the company, its products, outlets and history.
GreenNano Technologies was established in 2015 as a start-up company associated with the University of Toronto and GreenNano management to commercialize the invention of nanocellulose technology and carbon technology developed by inventors at the University of Toronto.
Since 2015, GreenNano Technologies has developed two facilities: one in Toronto close to downtown, and another in Windsor. The Windsor facility has actually been developed in collaboration with Ford Canada to foster innovations in lightweight manufacturing using light, nanofibre-based composite products.
In downtown Toronto, the facility is involved in nanofibre production, nanofibre-based products and device manufacturing, and also sales and marketing initiatives there [Inaudible—Editor] automotive and disposable smart packaging.
To give a little bit of my history, as a consultant I have affiliations at the University of Toronto as a professor and as former dean of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto as well. Being globally involved since 1993 to commercialize research innovation, the forest products for value-added applications.... I was one of the founders of the world WPC forum: the wood fibre plastic composite forum in 1989 at the University of Toronto.
Since then, in 1993, we launched our first company in Toronto, followed by several companies in the United States. The WPC industry today, globally, is worth about $8 million. We did have in Canada about 21 companies at one stage. That was the peak of the business in Canada, which was about 2005. In 2008, we lost practically all of them, except for two that still exist in the Toronto area.
Beyond these, the business has gone to being mostly centred in the Asia-Pacific and China. Last year, China had a market of over $6 billion itself. This shows the potential of the forest product industry for value-added applications.
Since that time, our university has ventured into another company, which has been developed in co-operation with Magna and Ford Motor Company, with the involvement of a few other OEMs from Ontario, to develop lightweight composite materials for the automotive industry.
In 2009, we demonstrated that microfibre based on wood pulp could be used and perform as a structural material. The first time, globally, was as a structural door model in the Nissan Sentra GXE. Unfortunately, after 2008, because of the fibreglass market pricing from China, the market at that point in time could not compete price-wise; therefore, we had to move to some more value-added applications at that point.
As a result, in 2015, GreenNano Technologies was created. Since then, it has been working toward value-added applications in two sectors, primarily. One is the automotive sector, where we are looking mostly at very high-value applications in EV powertrain development, where the powertrain components contain a battery, battery casing and battery packs with about 40% more lightweight material reducing the metal materials that are being used right now.
An interesting invention happened during this time. At the same time GNT was able to use nanocellulose in a very small quantity, to the level of about 5%, in combination with forest-based advanced carbon, nanostructured carbon materials, which were actually categorically combustion residues of the forest floor, which gave nanostructured graphene-like carbon materials, were being introduced in these automotive structural components for the EV powertrain applications.
That actually helped these nanofibres, the cellulose nanofibres, to overcome one of the largest demerits of cellulose fibres, i.e., poor resistance to high-thermal barrier properties.
As a result of these hybrid combinations, at GreenNano Technologies we were able to have a product that can withstand as high as 170°C on a continuous basis. This is one of the achievements that was patented by them and then commercialized.
Since COVID came, GNT has also been involved in the health care sector. Very recently they developed a new product for renewable masks. This was done in combination with the University of Toronto's copper-coating technology. They have developed copper-coated renewable fibre technology, which is used as a filter for disposable masks.
They also have products that have gone—