Canadian Biomass • Spring 2025 • A POSITIVE IMPACT

Drax’s Burns Lake facility offering much-needed support to B.C.’s northwest region

When you hop in a car and drive throughout the northwest region of British Columbia, it’s easy to see the impact that shuttered sawmills and other wood products plants have had on the region. Few areas have been hit harder by the challenges facing the province’s forest products sector. However, there are still some bright spots in the region that are helping the region offer meaningful employment while offering a sustainable solution to the world’s energy crises. One of those bright spots is Drax’s Burns Lake wood pellet manufacturing plant.

Drax has a major economic impact in northwest B.C. In addition to having 127 full-time employees in the region (70 full-time employees at Burns Lake), the company has spent $68 million in the northwest on fibre, wages and salaries, rail and external contractors. It has also spent $4.61 million on capital expenditures, $7 million in direct total taxes, and generated $20 million in total tax revenues from spending within the region. Of Drax’s $119 million in operating expenditures, 57 percent was spent at suppliers within B.C.’s northwest region. In total, the company has generated $77 million in direct, indirect and induced GDP contributions within the region.

While the Burns Lake facility isn’t the company’s sole pellet plant operating in the northwest region of B.C., it is one of the largest producers of wood pellets for the company with production targets of 320,000 MT pellets annually.

All of the wood pellets produced at the plant are shipped overseas to supply the growing Asian market as well as Drax Power Station.

When driving up to the plant, the first thing you see are wheel loaders working tirelessly to supply the plant from its fibre yard. All of the biomass is sourced from harvest-designated B.C. forests through a combination of sawdust and sawmill residuals (81 per cent) and low grade roundwood, tops, branches, and bark (19 per cent).

To meet an annual production target of 320,000 MT of wood pellets, the team at Burns Lake is always busy finding ways to source the fibre needed. That being said, Drax only purchases fibre that meets the local, international and company level sustainability requirements for biomass.

These requirements ensure the biomass sector helps to create positive outcomes for people, nature and the climate by sourcing biomass. Drax’s biomass sourcing policy, recently updated in March 2025, provides insight into the biomass sourcing requirements for all of Drax’s pellets mills, including Burns Lake, as well as other Drax operating assets that use biomass.

One advantage that the Burns Lake facility has over some other pellet plant operations is that it has always ran a rough mixture of fibres.

The ability to process a wide variety of fibre gives the team at Burns Lake more options in terms of being able to change up its recipes for making pellets, and will offer the other Drax plants in the area that flexibility in the future. However, the rougher fibres are harder on the equipment.

“The course fibre wears out equipment a lot faster. That is the biggest challenge and plant teams need to be set up and prepared for that. We run most of the same equipment at each of the sites, however there are customizations based on the type of fibre breakdown required,” says Rodney Bedford, plant manager at Drax Burns Lake.

The key to successfully using a wide variety of rougher fibres is a strong preventative maintenance program, good fibre mix production planning, and always looking ahead.

“Luckily for us, we have a good team. Drax has really stepped up its game when it comes to paying a competitive rate – not just for our site, but all the sites,” Rodney says. “We pay a good rate that compares and sometimes exceeds most of the sawmills in the area, but also compares and exceeds a lot of the mines.”

The pellet production process begins in the yard, where loaders feed three different fibre decks: shaving, hog, and the sawdust deck. The various materials are conveyed to a hogger that processes the fibre through a grate below the rotor into hog discharge number one conveyor. The small material, sawdust and chips, will fall through the high scalping rolls into the hog discharge conveyor number one.

A second downsizing of the material occurs with a similar process using additional equipment, specifically the biosizer, which further refines the material. This ensures that the final product meets the necessary specifications while maintaining proper drying alignment.

A surge bin is located at the end of this process to ensure a steady uninterrupted flow is maintained at the dryers. Product is conveyed from there directly into two rotary drum recycling dryers. Once the material has been adequately dried, it is then resized by hammermills and conveyed to 12 Andritz pelletizers. Once this process is completed the pellets are sent by conveyors to the railcar loading area and transported to the Port of Prince Rupert or Fibreco in North Vancouver to be shipped overseas to the Asian market.

“We have a burner that we make our own fuel for from the excess during the production process. We have different screens in power number two for that, and that’s how we heat up the burner to dry the product,” Bedford explains.

To ensure a safe production process, each pellet line is equipped with CV Technology spark detection equipment and dust is managed by Allied Blower technologies.

Since taking over ownership of the Burns Lake facility in 2021 from Pinnacle Pellet, Drax has invested heavily in improving safety and reducing emissions throughout the plant’s operations.

Another area where Drax focused was emissions control. In addition to investing in spark and explosion detection systems, the company invested in a $2.5 million baghouse project to further reduce emissions and ensure they are operating well within permit limits and maintaining the highest levels of compliance standards.

“We have invested in several baghouses here at Drax Burns Lake, as well as many safety devices for explosion protection and mitigation on the equipment. But the big dollar values were the emissions related items,” says Liezl van Wyk, vice-president of northern operations. “Staying in compliance and making sure that we are compliant with all of our emissions controls is of utmost importance to us at Drax.”

Prior to the baghouse project, the plant was already complaint with emissions guidelines, but Drax wanted to take it one step further. They installed another baghouse to manage exhaust emissions off a dry product cyclone which was not being tested for emissions at the time.

“A lot of our plants are centrally located within the communities. That means they can be right next to retail stores or elementary schools. So, another reason to go above and beyond is because we are dedicated to being a good neighbour in our communities,” says Caroline Bleay, Drax’s communications manager for Canada.

While the annual production target is currently 320,000 MT, the plant has the potential to produce a higher capacity. However, meeting emissions targets places a cap on production targets.

“We try and put out as much as we can. But with our dryers, for example, we can only put so much through them. They have a point where we can’t go any higher because of emissions,” Bedford says. “We are balancing meeting our production targets while also staying in compliance, we’ve basically put a ceiling on all of our temperatures and anything from the dryer that puts the WESP (Wet Electrostatic Precipitator) at risk of being out of compliance. We’ve done multiple performance tests to get the balance right on production and emissions. Right now, where we sit is where we need to be as far as hitting compliance.”

Safety is of utmost importance at Drax. The Burns Lake facility has a significant number of first aid trained employees on site anytime the plant is in operation.

“We have Level 3 First Aiders on site. We do not run if we do not have a Level 3 on site,” Bedford says, adding that all employees are required to do some computer- based training. The site also has a Joint Health and Safety Committee that works on safety initiatives and training. The staff have mandatory daily safety meetings.

Paul Fletcher, HS&E manager for Drax’s Burns Lake and Meadowbank plants, focuses much of his time on pushing compliance and performing safety audits on site.

“It’s to help build that safety culture and make sure everybody understands the training, that everyone’s on the same page,” he says. “We have 70 employees here. So, it’s a lot of people to ensure understand what we’re trying to put out and to understand the safety process.”

To promote employee engagement related to safer operations, the plant’s central system allows employees to enter hazard IDs.

“All employees have access to it. So, if they see something out in the field that they feel is a concern, they put in the hazard ID in the same place we do our investigations. They can see our investigations, any of our observations, which we require weekly,” van Wyk explains. “Our plant management teams do multiple observations and audits throughout the week in the same system. It’s one system where all of our safety documentation goes.”

Drax has also put a system in place where the company’s various production plant safety teams in the region can communicate with each other.

“We have a really good system within our plants,” Bleay says. “Our plant managers are all connected through a communications program for HS&E (Health, Safety & Environment), making sure everybody’s on the same page when it comes to what is going on at other plants. As well, all the guys have lockout/tagout. Everything from the first aid to health and safety systems are connected across the board. Our operations team has noticed a palpable increase in safety from the pre- Drax days.”

Drax going above and beyond for installing explosion mitigation and protection is something that every employee appreciates, noting that many employees have been around long enough to have seen the side effects of not having these systems in place.

“We’ve also seen the reaction by having them in place. Having put the money – and its millions of dollars – into venting, bottle, suppression, on all of our conveyance and detection, the safety side of things has gone a long ways,” he says.

In addition to the economic impact of the Burns Lake facility on the region, Drax also regularly gives back to the community through a wide variety of initiatives. The company has a total of $52,000 in community fund donations and an additional $50,000 in corporate fund donations since 2023. These donations support local schools, STEM education, Indigenous groups, local food banks, and more.