GreenCentre spin-off attracts $3.2 million

A new spin-off company from GreenCentre Canada (GCC) has attracted $3.2 million from industry investors and venture capital firms. Switchable Solutions Inc was formed by GCC around the technologies developed by Dr Philip Jessop, Canada Research Chair in green chemistry at Queen's Univ. Half of the investment came from unnamed strategic industry partners, financial partners and management in the form of cash and industry development services. The solvent technology developed by Jessop has many uses ranging from oil extraction from seeds or algae to plastics recycling and clean bitumen extraction from oil sands. Lab-scale trials on bitumen extraction have produced promising results and a producer of plastic consumer products is now validating trial materials of a test on polystyrene plastic waste. Switchable is building a recycling demonstration plan at the Mississauga site of Fielding Chemicals....