Partnerships and value chains for lignin-based biorefineries - A case-study approach.

The Canadian forest products industry is exploring new opportunities to diversity their revenue sources and product portfolio, and accessing new markets by implementing a forest biorefinery. This research considered the overall approach for the implementation of a biorefinery at a Kraft pulp mill by creating partnerships within the value chains of the mill to mitigate risks and enhance the likelihood for success of a biorefinery. The key challenges with forming successful partnerships for a biorefinery revolve around finding and evaluating potential partners. This research attempted to mitigate the impact of these challenges by creating a systematic partner selection process and evaluation criteria. This was accomplished by creating partnership strategies which included a customized partner selection process, identification of types of partners needed, finding potential partners, and development of evaluation criteria using the analytical hierarchical method. These methods were applied to a case-study Kraft pulp mill in western Canada to demonstrate their applicability. --Leaf ii.