Woody Harrelson plans paper mill

Actor Woody Harrelson is planning to raise money for Prairie Paper Ventures Inc. a private company he started 15 years back.
Prairie Paper makes its paper using a different mix of material from normal: 80% of the inputs come from wheat straw and the rest from recycled fibre. The paper is known as Step Forward Paper. It’s available on Amazon US, and at Staples, Lyreco and Basics.
In a posting on its website, “Out of the Furnace” star Harrelson, who is holding up a box of paper, said “it’s good for the forests, it’s good for the farmers and it’s good for our future.”
The company’s tree-free paper is produced in India – because no ecomill is available in North America and Europe. The ultimate goal is to “build a 100% tree-free, off-the-grid, eco-friendly, chlorine-free mill on the Prairies where millions of tonnes of leftover wheat straw is readily available,” said Christina Marshall, director of marketing.

In the final section of the video, Harrelson adds: “Two boxes of this paper saves one tree, so you can make a very real difference.” On the same website, the company claims to have saved 8,681 trees.
But the $5-million that the company is seeking to raise won’t come from a public offering. Instead the offering will be posted on the Optimize Capital Markets’ website, specifically its institutional crowdfunding portal. But only those investors who meet the accredited investor rule will be able to participate.
So far Prairie Papers has raised about $10-million. Some of that capital came from the Canadian federal and Manitoba governments. In a mid-2010 release, Ottawa said that so far, “the provincial and federal governments have invested $575,000 in Prairie Pulp and Paper,” through a variety of programs. Since then another $3.4-million has been provided.