ENTREVESTOR: Turning landfill fodder into valuable products

A disruptive technology that eliminates the need for landfills will soon be operational on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, according to Peter Vinall, CEO of Chester-based Sustane Technologies Inc.

Sustane has developed technology that allows solid waste destined for landfills to be made into clean and valuable products such as fuel pellets.

The Sustane facility to be built near the Chester landfill at Kaizer Meadow will divert over 90 per cent of material away from the landfill.

Vinall said the Sustane technology is unlike other techniques that create biomass from waste because it lowers contamination by plastics to a negligible 0.1 per cent.

Such a low point of contamination means the products have commercial value.

“This is the first technology that can take raw garbage destined for landfill and separate it into clean products,” said Vinall, who has worked around the world in the bio-energy and pulp and paper industries.

Sustane was the overall winner in the 2016 I-3 Technology Start-up Competition, the biennial contest run by Innovacorp, which recognizes the best new innovative business in Nova Scotia.

The company’s winnings totaled $225,000.

“The win brings money which is always important, but more than that is the validation,” said Vinall, whose previous roles include president and CEO of the AV Group in New Brunswick.

The Sustane core technology was developed by the company’s second co-founder and chief technology officer Javier De La Fuente of Spain.

Vinall and De La Fuente met three years ago. “I was looking for something like this and what he was doing was amazing. When we combined this with a new cleaning idea we had the complete solution….” Vinall said.

The pair founded Sustane in 2014 with chief financial officer Robert Richardson, an accountant and businessman.

Work on the $15 million Chester plant will begin this spring.
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