OLD TOWN, ME, Nov. 19, 2013 (Local News) -For more than a decade, the paper industry in Maine has faced lower profits, mills closing, ownership changes, and thousands of jobs lost. The pulp and paper industry has been trying to redefine itself. In Old Town, they are hoping to be on the cusp of a breakthrough for a new process to extract sugars from wood waste that can be used to make biofuels and bioplastics.

Darrell Waite is the biorefinery Process Manager at Old Town Fuel and Fiber. "The technology we're developing here at Old Town Fuel and Fiber is really an industry changer," he said.

That technology would take the wood waste generated from the mill and break it down in stages until it becomes a black liquid known as woody biomass cellulosic sugar. For the past few years, Waite has been working on this pilot project to prove that the mill could house a biorefinery that would be economically viable.

WCSH - Old Town Mill making sugars for biofuels out of wood waste

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