Asphalt shingle maker IKO Industries Ltd. has signed a five-year agreement to supply manufacturing waste for reprocessing at Northstar Clean Technologies Inc.’s planned facility in Calgary.

“We’re trying to explore what makes sense from a long-term perspective in terms of what can we incorporate into our operations and what’s the scope we can have in terms of repurposing those waste materials to reduce the amount of waste that’s going in landfills,” Derek Fee, a corporate communications manager at IKO, told Sustainable Biz Canada in an interview.

Northstar, based in Vancouver, breaks down asphalt shingles into liquid asphalt, fibre and aggregates for reuse and recycling, which produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to regular asphalt production.

The agreement will allow for up to 10,000 tonnes of shingles per year to be diverted from landfills, Fee said.

Calgary-headquartered IKO operates manufacturing sites across North America and Europe that produce hundreds of millions of shingles per year for global markets, according to Fee.

How the Northstar-IKO agreement will work

Through Northstar’s subsidiary Empower Environmental Solutions Calgary Ltd., IKO will send the shingle waste from its Calgary operations to Northstar’s Empower Calgary Facility.

The Empower Calgary Facility is the design phase. In an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada, Aidan Mills, Northstar’s president and CEO, said construction is expected to begin in the summer and commissioning to start in October.

“Hopefully by the end of the year, the facility will be up and running fully,” Mills said.

The Calgary facility is expected to process 40,000 tonnes of asphalt shingles per year, according to Mills. The agreement is aimed at accumulating a 15,000-tonne inventory with IKO and other Northstar partners ahead of the facility’s commissioning.

Mills previously told Sustainable Biz Canada the company chose Calgary for the facility because the city is “going to be the centre of the energy transition economy.”

Fee said Northstar first approached IKO for the partnership, and IKO decided it was a good fit for the company in Western Canada.

Sustainability “makes good business sense” because “if we reclaim a lot of these products that’s fewer raw materials that we’re going to have to incorporate into the manufacturing process to begin with,” he added.

Mills said IKO had supplied waste shingles to Northstar for its pilot plant in Delta, B.C., and discussed plans for collaboration in Calgary and Toronto.

The initial five-year deal holds mutual extension options. Fee did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership.

Northstar's plans for 2024

Mills said the Empower Calgary Facility will be approximately 15,000 square feet on a 3.5-acre plot of land, and cost approximately $20 million in capital and associated costs.

Northstar’s roadmap for 2024 is to announce the development plan for its proposed Toronto facility by Q2, have the Empower Calgary Facility operational by the end of Q3 and unveil its designs for a facility in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in September.