Ever the workaholic, Frank Dottori spent no more than two years in retirement from Tembec before vaulting into the position of managing director of GreenField Ethanol’s cellulosic ethanol division. There, he oversees the company’s efforts to develop commercially viable technology to convert various biomass sources into ethanol. It’s noeasy task, he says.
“You start small, but you need to think big, because you just never know how far you can actually go.”
He wants to ensure Thunder Bay is part of his vision. The former Tembec CEO is looking to encourage senior levels of government to create a green energy research plant in Thunder Bay. While the project is still in the “blue sky” phase, he envisions the plant as a $25 million facility, employing up to 30 people to test new and groundbreaking ways of creating energy from the abundance of plants in the North. With its burgeoning cluster of bioresearch and a growing knowledge base of new biosciences, Thunder Bay is an ideal Northern Ontario location for such a facility, he says.
“This could have the potential for creating some revolutionary technologies, and I think one way for Northern Ontario to participate is to put one of these pilot plants in Thunder Bay,” he says.
“That’s a great nucleus for entrepreneurs, and you never know what comes out of these things.”
As full-fledged production plants can require an investment of up to $300 million, these smaller pilot plants can also act as demonstration units to help build a business case for newly tested technologies.
While he’s been quietly pushing the idea through private channels, Dottori says he’ll be taking a much more active role in bringing the idea to reality. He’ll be encouraging the federal government to support the idea at the Canadian Forest Service conference in the coming weeks.
Aside from the obvious economic benefits, the development of additional research capacity would help attract all manner of creative thinkers and researchers. In fact, he argues this approach may be the most viable way of rejuvenating the pulp and paper sector.
He should know: having headed up forestry giant Tembec for 33 years, Dottori oversaw the growth of the company from a single mill to an international powerhouse. Born in Timmins, raised on a farm, he learned at a very early age the value of perseverance, motivation and survival. These qualities served him well in the early 1970s when, as a chemical engineer, he helped spearhead the employee acquisition and incorporation of a shut-down pulp mill. In 1973, the new company’s mill made $13 million. Over the following years, he eventually became CEO of the company, now called Tembec and helped to grow it from 373 workers to 11,000 employees worldwide. This is his proudest achievement.
He credits that culture for helping the company to achieve its successes, and it’s something he feels strong about, even after he retired in 2006.
