Verschuren Centre in Sydney says planned expansion will attract business to Nova Scotia

Officials with the Verschuren Centre for Sustainability in Energy and the Environment in Sydney, N.S., say a planned expansion will help attract new business to Nova Scotia.  

The non-profit facility is working to build its own biomanufacturing centre that will allow companies to develop sustainable technologies. Biomanufacturing is the process of using living systems, including plant and animal cells, to produce commercial materials.

Speaking Tuesday in Halifax, Verschuren Centre president and CEO Beth Mason said the facility hopes to draw companies from across North America and possibly Europe. The expansion has already started and the new equipment is expected to be in operation after July 2023.

"From a competitive landscape there really isn't this capacity [of biomanufacturing]," Mason told the Nova Scotia Legislature's standing committee on economic development.

"I think there's a lot of documented evidence right now that, globally, there's a bottleneck for bio-tech companies to get to market and it's going to become critical, which is really the foundation for why we started the build."

The Verschuren Centre is already home to a bioreactor — one of only three in Canada — and says its planned expansion will increase its bioreactor capacity by more than 10 times. A bioreactor is a vessel in which researchers process their materials using a variety of reactions including fermentation.

Company relocated from Ontario

Sydney-based AlterBiota is one example of a company using the centre's equipment and staff. The company was originally based in Ontario and has now entered the product-development phase for bio-graphene made from wood waste, Mason said.

Bio-graphene can reduce the concrete industry's carbon footprint by lowering the amount of cement it uses. Cement and concrete are responsible for seven per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Cement Association of Canada.

Over the past three years, Verschuren Centre staff have been working with about 40 different companies, approximately 87 per cent of which are from outside Nova Scotia, Mason said. To keep up with that level of demand, it has doubled its workforce to 40 employees. 

Mason said the Verschuren Centre has also reached out to local colleges to discuss new programs to teach the technical skills needed by companies arriving in Sydney for research and development. 

"Clean-tech cluster"

In June, the government of Nova Scotia announced a $2.5-million in funding for the Verschuren Centre's expansion. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency contributed another $2 million through the Canada Coal Transition Initiative Infrastructure Fund.

Nova Scotia's deputy minister of Economic Development, Scott Farmer, said the spending could help create a "clean-tech cluster" in Sydney that will grow the local economy. 

"We've seen companies relocate from southern U.S., from Toronto, to be in Sydney," said Farmer. "It's one of these gems that we have inside of our ecosystem that is a magnet. It's attracting these clean-tech businesses."

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