The province’s Innovation Saskatchewan is providing almost 400 thousand dollars to support Red Leaf Pulp.

Red Leaf Pulp announced plans last month to build Canada’s first waste straw processing plant for 350 million dollars.

Agriculture minister David Marit says the provincial support follows a move by Ottawa to provide almost 500 thousand dollars for the project.

“We did see it as an opportunity for farmers to create another value of off that acre of ground that they’re not only growing cereal grain on, now they can remove a product, that in some cases, does solve a problem for next year when they’re seeding either a canola crop or a pulse crop into that ground,” said Marit.

Red Leaf Pulp is expected to produce 182 thousand tons of market pulp a year, to be turned into products like paper towels, tissue and cardboard.

Construction is expected to be completed by 2023.