Pellet Profile Doubling Down Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group is betting a new port facility will boost its wood pellet export capacity. By John Tenpenny sure no stone has been left unturned be-fore moving on to the next project is sound business practice and at Pinnacle Renew-able Energy Group it is a strategy for future expansion as wood pellet demand – glob-ally and domestically – continues to grow. For Leroy Reitsma, Pinnacle’s president and COO, the company’s growth has been based on its ability to handle a full spec-trum of wood for production and being able to get its product to the export market as production capacity has grown from less than 100,000 tonnes in 2004 to more than 1.2 million tonnes today. The company was founded by Rob and M aking Jim Swaan in 1988 as Pinnacle Feed and Pellet, with its first plant in Quesnel, B.C. Expansion began in the early part of the 2000s, when, according to Reitsma, some the of European power companies started to view wood pellets as a potential displace-ment for coal. Beginning in 2004, Pinnacle constructed or acquired five more facilities. “Our goal over the next three to five years is to more than double the size of the company from our current capacity of 1.2 million tonnes,” Reitsma tells Canadian Biomass , sitting in the lobby of a Prince George hotel earlier this year. “To achieve this there’s going to be some expansion of current facilities and some new builds that are associated with that.” TERMINAL PROJECT While no specifics were forthcoming about those plans, Reitsma was happy to share the latest on Pinnacle’s current con-struction project – Westview Terminal – a $42-million wood pellet receiving, storage and shipping facility nearing completion in Prince Rupert. “We’re still on track to put volume through there by the fall,” says Reitsma, not-ing the first silo went up in early January. The project includes construction of private rail storage tracks, wood pellet re-ceiving and unloading buildings, installa-tion of a conveyor and ship loader system and up to seven silos with a capacity of 85,000 tonnes. The state-of-the-art facility MarCh/april 2013 18 Canadian BIOMASS
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