Waste Management & Enerkem Announce Strategic Investment

The closing of this new round of financing which generated CAN $53.8 million comes from Enerkem's existing institutional investors, Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and BDR Capital as well as from new investors, Waste Management and Cycle Capital.

The new funds raised will be used to support Enerkem's growth plan, including initiating the construction of its second waste-to-biofuels plant. Morgan Stanley acted as Enerkem's agent.

Enerkem's proprietary thermo-chemical technology helps convert waste materials into biofuels such as ethanol. Its technology is able to process diverse carbon-based feedstocks, including sorted municipal solid waste, construction and demolition wood, as well as agricultural and forest residues.

"We want to extract more value from the materials we manage than anyone else in our industry through new and emerging processing and conversion technologies," said Tim Cesarek, managing director of Organic Growth at Waste Management.

In December 2009, Enerkem was awarded US $50 million in funding by the U.S. Department of Energy for development of its planned Mississippi plant. Its commercial-scale demonstration facility in Westbury, Canada, which was completed in 2009, reached 1,000 hours of operation.