BALING straw may be the last thing on grower‘s minds this season, but if a new pilot project to use straw for paper production takes off, a totally new £27m/year market for up to 900,000t of straw could blossom.

BioRegional MiniMills is in the process of finalising funding to build a £1.3m pilot plant to turn straw into pulp, for papermaking, says HGCA‘s market development chairman Julian Gibbons. HGCA is contributing £49,100 to research energy efficiency.

“If the project takes off straw could be used instead of up to 20% imported wood pulp, creating a local renewable source.”

The MiniMill technology allows plants to be around a tenth of the size of conventional wood pulp mills, making them much more energy efficient, he adds.