LONDON - StormFisher Biogas and Loblaw Companies Limited (Loblaw) announces an agreement that will see all the organic trimmings produced at Loblaw corporate grocery stores in South Western Ontario diverted to StormFisher's new renewable energy facility in London, Ontario. Through this agreement, StormFisher will provide Loblaw with an additional location to convert their organic trimmings to renewable energy and Loblaw becomes the first grocery retailer to work with StormFisher to have its organics used to generate electricity.

"We're looking forward to turning Loblaw's organics into renewable energy," said Ryan Little, StormFisher's Vice President of Business Development. "This initiative ties in well with Loblaw's efforts to support renewable energy as a way of reducing their carbon footprint."

The 47 Loblaw stores, which are located in the Windsor to Waterloo corridor, are expected to provide organics that can generate the same amount of electricity as is consumed by approximately 225 homes annually, and reduce over 300 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year.

"In 2008, Loblaw expanded its organic waste diversion program to include all our Ontario corporate stores, successfully decreasing the amount of organic waste ending up in landfills across Ontario and helping us to reach our 70 percent waste diversion target," said Mark Schembri, Vice President, Store Maintenance, Loblaw Companies Limited. "The construction of the StormFisher facility in London supports Loblaw's desire to continue sourcing additional infrastructure across the country to dispose of organics in an environmentally responsible fashion."

StormFisher's London biogas facility, which is scheduled to begin operation in late 2010, will convert about 140,000 tonnes of organic materials from a number of agri-food producers into renewable energy through a process known as anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion is the same process the stomach uses to turn food into energy and is considered the most environmentally friendly method of dealing with organic trimmings. The electricity produced at the biogas plant will be sold to the Ontario Power Authority and form part of the province's electricity supply mix.