Earth University, ÅF Team to Produce Banana Paper in Costa Rica

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Earth University, Costa Rica, and ÅF, Stockholm, Sweden, have agreed to jointly optimize the University's paper machine for banana paper production. The Banana Paper Project underwent a number of significant changes and adjustments in the production plant in 2008 and ÅF's current task is to map the path forward, ensuring both manageable and timely correct processes to successfully manufacture paper with discarded stalks of the banana plant and recycled office paper for commercial purposes.

The final banana paper product is aimed at such niche markets as printing presses, high-end notebooks and journals, and corporate stationary. Earth University has coordinated the first post-consumer paper collection in 11 educational institutions in the area. The collected material will be combined with banana stalk fiber to produce finished paper.

ÅF's dedicated Paper and Board expert team is one of the pulp and paper industry's most respected and preferred supplier of strategy consulting and engineering for all kinds of pulp & paper mill projects globally. As part of the ÅF group of consulting companies, they draw from over 100 years of experience and more than 4400 consultants worldwide supplying expertise to the whole pulp and paper making related projects.

Earth University, inaugurated in 1990, is a private, non-profit international institution. The academic program emphasizes the agricultural sciences and the rational management of natural resources.