Wolseley based company Natural Elm Builders pitched their product and brought home the top Award at the 15th Annual Manitoba Environmental Industries Association’s Green Dragon’s Lair Pitch competition on October 22.
“Its a nerve wracking event,” says Jack Winram, executive director of Manitoba Environmental Industries Association (MEIA), “but it’s so important because the skills they get from a pitch competition like that can be translated to pitching for financing and to investors.”
The competition is open to companies across Canada and includes a $10,000 top prize, and $5000 prize for an Audience Choice Award in a high stakes live pitch event that gives companies five minutes to explain what they do.
Amalia Zurzolo who founded the company with her husband Francisco said “we tried our best to make it as thorough and clear as possible, but it’s also hard to tell the story of your business in five minutes… we’re so grateful for that opportunity to share our work with a wider audience.”
Natural Elm Builders, based in Wolseley, have been building homes and designing special projects with hempcrete, which has numerous benefits for the environment.
“One of the attractions that Elm Natural has is that it’s very scalable, and construction has a huge demand for reducing its carbon footprint, or its GHG contributions, because buildings represent about 20 to 30% of our carbon footprint. And so the best bang for your buck is always insulation. When you have an insulation product that can increase its value two to three times that’s significant,” said Winram adding that it also has ancillary advantages.
“It’s firepoof and you can make it close to the place where you’re building. It’s insect and rodent proof. All those things make it a great product.”
The Zurzolos are using the prize money to work with a Canadian machinist to be able to create a hemp block machine, which were previously formed on-site for each project. “There’s some testing involved, but this is part of research and development to produce hemcrete on a larger scale, and to be able to offer our insulation to other builders.”
The fact that hempcrete can be created entirely within Canada also gives it a unique and important benefit, Amalia told The Leaf.
“We’re offering a tariff-resistant product. Our hemp comes from Manitoba, our lime comes from Ontario. We’re not relying on any international suppliers and in that way we can keep our costs stable. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now around tariffs and how it’s going to affect so many industries, including the building materials industry.”
“A lot of our (building) products come from the states and other countries. So it’s really amazing to be able to offer something that’s made locally, is supporting the local economy and supporting the industrial hemp cultivators in our province.”
Other finalists in the competition included CPPA Binder, JunkCycle, Lakewater Nutrient Capture and RAX, with Lakewater Nutrient Capture taking the $5,000 Audience Choice award.
“Being able to showcase new technologies that can improve our environmental footprint is exactly who we are and what we do,” said Winram. “We represent companies that buy and sell goods and services that improve our environmental footprint and they’re a key component of our economic development in the province.” The MEIA holds an annual Clean Techology conference that is normally held at the end November but was moved to December 2nd because of the Grey Cup.