News

September 23, 2008

Papyrus Returns In A Banana Boat

By Our Agri Expert In Oz

If papyrus was good enough for the Egyptians to write on then a small Australian company reckons something very similar is good enough today. The main difference between what was used 5,000 years ago on the banks of the Nile, and what’s being developed today by the appropriately-named Papyrus Australia, is the feedstock. Egyptians used the pith of the papyrus plant as their “paper”. The Aussie variation is to use the stalk or stem of banana plants, technically the world’s biggest herb. There are other differences, but the essential aim is the same, to take the cellulose matter in a plant, strip it finely and use it without pulping and chemical digestion to arrive at a usable product suitable as a replacement for wood or paper.

In some ways what Papyrus Australia is seeking to do is develop a commercial business based on the super-fine “veneering” of banana stems, the trunk left behind by farmers after the fruit has been harvested. Conceived as far back as 1994 the “paper from banana” project has received strong Australian Government backing, including grants to take the technology through from a bright idea to commercial production, a step currently underway with the building of the world’s first “banana paper”...