Matawinie, Que., earns first BDO Zone ‘A’ rating in Quebec for woody biomass

The Community Futures Development Corporation (SADC) Matawinie and Ecostrat are pleased to announce the issue of a new Bioeconomy Development Opportunity (BDO) Zone rating for woody biomass.

The Matawinie BDO Zone is rated ‘A’, extending over a 150-km driving distance from the municipality and generating a surplus of 360,000 dry metric tons per year of woody biomass. The prestigious ‘low risk’ rating signals the region’s strong and well-established forestry supply chains, the resilience of which is strongly supported by over 20 sawmills in the Zone.

The Matawinie BDO Zone is the first BDO Zone rating in the province of Québec for woody biomass and supports the province’s efforts to become a global player in the clean energy transition. With three well-positioned bio-project sites featuring excellent infrastructure, the Zone offers an ideal location for new bio-based development projects that depend on reliable, long-term supplies of wood fibre.

“The forest industry is an important and vital economic sector of our Regional County Municipality (RCM). This BDO Zone rating on forest biomass is perfectly in line with our new agreement with the provincial government to maximize the potential of forest management. In that regard, we are actively collaborating with private forest owners to increase the volume of wood production from this source, as well as supporting secondary and tertiary processing of high-value-added products. Ultimately, we aim to develop a network of forest biomass boilers and encourage research and development of bioplastics. By combining these two initiatives, we believe that it will attract new partners to Matawinie for the innovation and development of our forest sector,” said Isabelle Perreault, Warden (Prefect) of the RCM Matawinie.

Jordan Solomon, chairman of the BDO Zone Initiative added, “We have a strong degree of confidence that Matawinie’s ‘A’ rating will function to attract attention from bio-based projects around the world. This will help Matawinie leverage local biomass surpluses to create economic value for the community, the province, and Canada.

As the BDO Zone Initiative continues to sweep across Canada and the whole of North America, we are grateful for support and funding from bodies such as the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP), which helps pave the way for communities like Matawinie to participate in the global bioeconomy.”