Breaking New Ground In The Building Industry

Building A More Livable Environment:

The mission of StrawJet Inc. is to develop and market the StrawJet harvester, the hand fed StrawJet and StrawCore material in order to support the development of a building industry based on sound environmental principals using agricultural by-products and non-toxic materials.

StrawJet Inc. is about ideas than can make a difference and making those ideas work. By bringing this new environmentally beneficial and low cost building method to market, StrawJet will change the way structures are built and take a leading position in the rapidly growing green building industry and help that industry to become mainstream.

StrawJet is also dedicated to the humanitarian goals of enabling citizens in the developing world, and others who have lost homes through natural disasters, to live in safe and comfortable homes without depleting the world's supply of timber and non renewable resources.

Accomplishments to Date:

Strawjet Inc. has achieved several objectives since its founding in March of 2005. It has received a grant from the EPA through the Small Business Innovation Research program and built a prototype harvester to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology. Testing performed on the produced material demonstrated that straw based building material had sufficient strength to support roof loads, sufficient insulation values to meet code, and was extremely fire resistant.

The team is currently focused on developing more cost competitive building systems utilizing the basic straw cable material. The goal is to develop the capacity to manufacture finished wall panels or complete wall systems in the field. This system would produce panels at a significantly lower cost than foam/OSB sandwich systems and place StrawJet on a par with other building systems in terms of construction labor costs.

Experiments are ongoing to determine the potential for using other materials such as flax, hemp and Jerusalem artichoke. The slightly higher material cost would be compensated for by superior performance. It is anticipated that using such materials buildings could be constructed with two or more stories without requiring auxiliary structural support from wood or steel.

Management:

StrawJet is managed by a dedicated four member team with skills in management of early phase corporations, marketing, construction, and finance. Each member plays an active and important role in bringing the technology to market in a way manner that will serve both the investors, and the health of the planet.

Commercial Applications:

The StrawCore building system has applications wherever there is a need for single story or two story construction. These special attributes of the material make it especially desirable in certain applications:

• Low cost of raw materials
• High level of sound attenuation
• Significant thermal mass resulting in greater temperature stability.
• No VOCs or formaldehyde based glues used in manufacturing.
• Rapid production of material during harvest season could be beneficial for rebuilding after natural or man caused disasters.

Customers who would find these attributes attractive would include:

• Home owners, especially in regions with high daily temperature fluctuations such as the dessert regions of the southwest and western states.
• Factories and storage facilities that need to maintain a consistent temperature e.g. wineries
• Relief organizations faced with constructing large numbers of dwellings rapidly especially in areas with limited supplies of wood.
• Home owners with chemical sensitivities.
• Builders and buyers concerned with green building and use of renewable materials.

Distribution:

Initially StrawJet will be manufacturing and selling StrawCore material produced by prototype machines. In 2008, we plan to begin production with a 4 cable machine with at least 4 times the capacity of the present prototype. As more Strawjet harvesters are built, we plan to lease them to regional distributors. Until demand exceeds our capacity to produce the machines, we will continue to manufacture the harvesters in Oregon.

The hand fed machine will be sold outright to the end user or NGO for distribution. We anticipate the production volume of hand fed machines will be large enough to enable us to subcontract the manufacturing to a third party within a year of initial sales. The marketing of the hand fed machine will be dependent on keeping the cost in line with technologies available in the developing world, and therefore will require a relatively high level of production to contain unit costs.