Mark Lewis
Mark Lewis is CEO of Sustainable Fiber Technologies (SFT) and Phoenix Pulp and Polymer. He is the winner of the 2020 TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award.
Lewis founded SFT, based in Renton, Wash., in 2015. Under his guidance, the company developed the Phoenix Process™, an environmentally benign method for pulping non-wood biomass materials. The Phoenix Process has been licensed by a number of facilities including Fortune 100 companies, and is used in the production of sustainable packaging, molded products, tissue and toweling, printing and writing paper.
Lewis began his education in pulping non-woods by pulping corn stover alongside Dr. Herb Schroeder at Colorado State University 40 years ago. His corporate career started with Weyerhaeuser in their research department in Longview, Wash. He joined TAPPI in 1978 and within a year was involved in the various testing committees. He finished his Weyerhaeuser tenure in the Papermaking Research Group working on the Extended Nip Project and felt development and prediction models.
After a period working with Noram Testing Equipment, Lewis went back into research as a papermaking research manager for a precipitated calcium carbonate manufacturer, a job that took him to fine paper mills across North America, including the start-ups at Prince Albert and Bennettsville, SC.
Lewis spent 17 years at the University of Washington teaching papermaking, fiber physics and pulping and bleaching. While there, he found Dr. Bill McKean working on wheat straw and corn stover, but doing the same thing everyone else was doing, trying to make the raw material fit existing processes. Lewis went back to what he did years before, knowing as a papermaker that if he could have good fibers, he could make good paper. In 2015, Lewis left the university and developed the Phoenix Process, founding Sustainable Fiber Technologies. Currently, ten of his former students work for SFT, and the Phoenix Process is currently being used on a number of biomass materials in North America, and a mill in Europe is slated to start using the process in 2021.
Since the beginning of his career, Lewis has been an active member in TAPPI including serving as Faculty Advisor at the University of Washington, and has risen up the officer ranks with TAPPI’s Pacific Local Section, including serving as Emcee of the Section’s 75th Anniversary event. Currently he serves as Chairman of the Non Wood Committee.