Nafici Environmental Research (NER), a business researching and developing the transformation of waste straw into paper pulp, has won the Rushlight award for Sustainable Manufacturing & Services
Specifically designed to support and promote clean technologies, innovations and initiatives; these awards recognise the low carbon and economical technology that uses surplus wheat straw to create a competitive and environmental alternative to hardwood paper pulp for use in paper manufacturing.
This is a successful year for NER; it secured two additional grants to help further develop its technology. Firstly, funding via West Sussex County Council ‘Be The Business’ grant to add a cleaning process to the pilot plant so to produce trial quantities of marketable straw based pulp.
Secondly, it has been selected for the ‘Climate KIC Accelerator programme’ organised by Imperial College London which enables it to continue research with the Universities of Brighton and Surrey and partners to prepare for the development of larger scale production.
“Winning these awards is an affirmation of what we are working to achieve. The fact people understand what we are doing – it has redoubled our energy and enthusiasm,” explained Florence Miremadi-Nafici, director and co-founder of NER.
“Our new manufacturing plant can be implemented on farms to produce unbleached and bleached paper pulp suitable for the production of finished paper/packaging products and valuable by-products from their waste straw. This technology not only reduces waste and carbon emissions but adds a new income stream to farms.”
NER aims to soon be in a position to deliver a complete turnkey solution for production plants in the UK and overseas using this new process.
