Good morning, Mr. Chair. I am extremely pleased to appear before you and your colleagues at this virtual sitting of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.
I will start with some background on my business partner, now deceased, and me. Doug was the founder of Bird Tool in the U.K. He was frequently presented honours for having the first lights-out facility in automotive tier one, was the centrefold of the industry publication, and was visited by the founder of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Corporation, Mr. Toyoda. His firm was purchased by my employer.
Doug and I worked to relocate a large contract from Japan to Canada, because Canada had higher-quality supplier ratings for the dynamic sealing systems. My employer, Standard Products, was the largest for this product worldwide. I was engineering lead for the group to accomplish this task on behalf of Ford in St. Thomas.
Prior to holding positions from technical management up to director over 30 years in automotive tier one, I spent six years in Florida as engineering manager of an ophthalmic lens manufacturer, where I developed the patented system to injection-mould ophthalmic lenses with the prescription already in the lens. I was asked to be the keynote speaker for the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering that year in California.
Later, when I returned to Canada, my team invented the single piece fastener injected bow seal for Pininfarina, an Italian coach-maker for Ferrari, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. We located manufacturing in Stratford, Ontario.
About five years ago, we wanted to make a difference and help the planet. We decided that if we could design a solid, renewable, odourless, smokeless, biomass-based fuel as a direct replacement for coal, we could have a huge impact. ERS Fuels was born after meeting our eventual president and financier, Mr. Sam Kazemeini. He is a serial entrepreneur with a real soft spot for initiatives that help our environment. We created a team and located our worldwide development centre near Stratford, Ontario.
All biomass-based competing products share a number of common flaws, which over two years we were able to formulate our way clear of. Chief among them is that they produce only 5,000 to 7,000 BTUs, while coal is around 12,000 BTUs. We identified an unwanted part of every landfill in the world that would be chemically correct to use as a binder. Then, over another year, we did a series of tests to manufacture the fuel. The result is a fuel that produces 12,000 BTUs, has little or no emissions, with 99.995% combustion efficiency, and the 0.05% ash can be added immediately to agriculture on the soil.
We partnered with ICFAR, the Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources attached to Ontario's Western University, chaired by Dr. Berruti, who was very helpful and became quite enamoured of our work. ERS Fuels has developed a patented process and is able to recombine the biomass and binder into a new material—patented—that has a density of one. It takes the oxygen from the binder and adds it to the oxygen in the biomass, resulting in our fuel having twice as much oxygen as in the air we breathe. ERS Fuels self-supports combustion, producing a clean blue flame. We continue to test different biomass from around the world, and validate testing through an independent lab in Toronto.
The path was tortuous and expensive. Our first fuel puck was three minutes' manufacturing time; now, four equipment iterations later, it is three seconds through automotive-based continuous improvement techniques.
As time progressed, we realized the government was espousing green strategies where we could align with them and make it happen in Canada. Of particular interest were off-grid northern and indigenous communities where the government flies in diesel to keep them running—and polluting. Our sales director and I were guests at an indigenous convention in Calgary—James Cree First Nation—attended by their assembly, and had a booth on the main floor, which was heavily trafficked by many band leaders.
The response was overwhelmingly positive and we set out to develop purpose-built equipment that would replace diesel, provide electricity, heat greenhouses and municipal buildings, and produce solid fuel for off-reserve properties while providing employment for its members.
We will establish seats at local colleges to train members of these indigenous communities in forestry management and small utility operations.
We have the technology, the team and the vision. We are only missing the support from our federal government at this time.
We need the government to act on their environmental goals, support Canadian innovation in that regard and help us facilitate this move to a cleaner, more sustainable future for our country.
Thank you for hearing these comments.