The highlights from last month include:

• Completion of 30% design and drawings
• Submission of building permit applications to the City of Toronto and TRCA
• project design, preparation and submission of building permit applications;
• We also made good progress in our pursuit of additional feedstock suppliers, and have a plan in place to ensure we have all of the organics contracted within the coming months.   This is an extremely exciting and critical time for our project, with much work to get done to be operational by year end.
• In addition, while the construction is taking place, we will continue to explore every possible avenue to maximize project revenues (primarily on the fertilizer side) and minimize future operating costs.

Bond Sales

As of March 1st, we had sold $363,600 of the 5% bonds, which are currently sitting in an escrow account awaiting the completion of construction.

If you would like to invest in the latest bond offering, please fill out the form here (if you you a ZooShare member, make sure to check the “Yes, I’ve paid my ZooShare membership fee” box).

We have begun booking events for the Spring and Summer, in addition to what is coming up (Seedy Saturday, Green Living Show), and have submitted an application to the Canada Summer Jobs program in order to get a couple of students to assist with the effort. We are also planning for our groundbreaking ceremony, which will take place around Earth Week – an event we believe will attract strong media attention and help to further drive project momentum and bond sales.

Feedstock

Nothing significant to report on this front – conversations with our current and potential alternate retailers and waste management companies continued and have been positive in tone.  The various parties involved are interested in working with us, and see the positives of participating in our project, however it takes time to sort through the complexities together and create a strong agreement (as we’ve experienced over the years).  Our experience to date helps to expedite the conversation somewhat, and we continue to diligently follow up and answer questions, but ultimately it is a slow moving conversation.  At the point that we are ready to move on from the retailers and sign with a waste management company, the contract can get done much faster as those are more standardized agreements.  As a reminder, our focus continues to be first on retail-facing food companies who see the PR value of a long term relationship (20 years), followed by waste management companies that more easily serve our needs but on a more short term basis (1-5 years).

Design and Construction

Bioferm and their engineers completed the 30% project design and drawings this month – which have been submitted to the Zoo for approval and used to support building permit applications submitted to the City and TRCA.  We anticipate receiving the building permits by late March, early April, but may be impacted by the current labour dispute between the Inside Workers and the City. The turnkey contract is not yet ready for signing, but we continue to work on it together, and we are confident we can complete negotiations and execute in the next 4 weeks, prior to starting excavation and site preparation.   As stated above, there will be a groundbreaking ceremony at the site, taking place around Earth Week.  More details on this event will be made available once they are finalized.