by Paul K. Harral
U.S. farmers plant more than 1 billion acres of wheat every year. And once the grain is harvested, they simply plow under the wheat straw. It had no other significant use. Until recently.
Now brothers Tim and Kevin Kilpatrick, Tim Evans and a group of investors are turning that straw into a green-friendly building product they call Compressed Agricultural Fiber Board - CAFboard - in an 88,000-square-foot facility at 4200 Lubbock Ave.
The company, Stramit USA, says its wheat straw products can be used to replace traditional building materials such as fiberglass insulation, gypsum board, medium density fiberboard, particleboard and soundproofing panels. And, they are non-toxic, mold and pest resistant, energy efficient, highly sound absorbent and nearly fireproof.
Evans, Stramit executive vice president of sales and marketing, became familiar with the process in 2005 when he headed up sales and marketing for a company that was producing a similar product in Texas.
"They were a little too early in the green movement - and their manufacturing process was limited to one thickness of finished product," Evans said. But he and the others reached agreement with the original European company, Stramit UK, to bring the process to the United States to "capitalize on all the differing arenas for a truly authentic green board product."
He says no one else in the United States is producing CAFboard today that is free of resins and other binding agents.
"In fact, we believe there are only eight of these milling machines on the planet," Evans said.
He's talking about a machine nearly the length of a football field that takes in bales of straw at one end and, using compression under extreme heat and pressure, produces a rigid board that is wrapped in heavy-duty organic paper and cut to project-specific lengths. The process is actually energy negative.
"We have a finite number of resources on our planet for the most part," Evans said. "Why not invest in ways that use low-value, renewable resources instead of depleted other more important resources that take decades to replenish - like trees."
The company expects to eventually employ about 100 people in Fort Worth.
