BIOMASS Europe’s Pellet Basket CANADIAN Volume 6 No. 2 Continued demand from Europe has Canadian pellet producers optimistic as they ramp up capacity. he good news for Canadian wood pellet producers keeps on coming. From rosy predictions by industry analysts to announcements of new pro-duction coming online, the future of the industry looks bright indeed. Wood pellet exports from North America to Europe were up by over 70% in the third quarter of 2012, year-over-year, according to one report, which also revealed that pellet exports from the two primary pellet-producing regions in North America, the U.S. South and British Columbia, continued to in-crease in the third quarter of 2012. In the Maritimes, Viridis Energy an-nounced its Scotia Atlantic Biomass plant will begin shipping to Europe this fall, with the 25,000-metric-tonne shipload expected to leave the Port of Halifax in September. The company says the plant has the capacity to produce up to 10,000 tonnes per month, so the plan is to send a shipload about every three months. On the west coast, pellet pioneer Pinnacle is getting ready to open its Westview Termi-nal in Prince Rupert, B.C., around the same time. The $42-million facility will be able to accommodate Panamax class vessels up to 75,000 deadweight tonnes (DWT) with a loading rate of up to 2,000 tonnes per hour. “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,” Pinnacle president and COO Leroy Reitsma told Canadian Biomass in an exclusive interview (page 18). Canadian pellet production will also get a boost as sawmills continue to ramp up to meet Editor -John Tenpenny (905) 713-4351 [email protected] Associate Editor -Andrew Macklin (519) 429-5181 [email protected] Editorial Director/Group Publisher -Scott Jamieson (519) 429-3966 ext 244 [email protected] Contributors -David Lindsay Myriam Gauthier, Gordon Murray, Stefanie Wallace Market Production Manager Josée Crevier Ph: (514) 425-0025 Fax: (514) 425-0068 [email protected] National Sales Manager Ross Anderson Ph: (519) 429-5188 Fax: (519) 429-3094 [email protected] Quebec Sales Josée Crevier Ph: (514) 425-0025 Fax: (514) 425-0068 [email protected] Western Sales Manager Tim Shaddick [email protected] Ph: (604) 264-1158 Fax: (604) 264-1367 Media Designer -Emily Sun Canadian Biomass is published six times a year: February, April, June, August, October, and December. Published and printed by Annex Publishing & Printing Inc. Printed in Canada ISSN 2290-3097 Circulation Carol Nixon e-mail: [email protected] P.O. Box 51058 Pincourt, QC J7V 9T3 Subscription Rates: Canada -1 Yr $49.50; 2 Yr $87.50; 3 Yr $118.50 Single Copy -$9.00 (Canadian prices do not include applicable taxes) USA – 1 Yr $60 US; Foreign – 1 Yr $77 US Occasionally, Canadian Biomass magazine will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive this information, please contact our circulation department in any of the four ways listed above. No part of the editorial content of this publica-tion may be reprinted without the publisher’s written permission ©2013 Annex Publishing & Printing Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca t growing lumber demands in the U.S., with more low-cost sawmill residuals available. The good news continues across the At-lantic to the U.K., where RWE recently re-ceived approval for plans to keep its Tilbury Power Sta-tion operating for another 12 years. After modifications are made, the plant will con-sume around 2.7 million tonnes of pellets, with an estimated 60% of that total coming from Canada. The three major Euro-pean pellet import coun-tries remain the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium. Industry experts attri-bute the expected increase to the mandate set by the European Union in 2010 to hit a target of more than 20% renewable energy usage by 2020. Right now, most European countries are using less than 10%. “Europe is basically leading the world in terms of the green and energy movements and that’s because they don’t have their own energy forms, like oil or natural gas. So they’ve been under a lot of pressure because they are so dependent on foreign oil,” industry analyst Gerry Van Leeuwen said in a recent Globe and Mail article (another boost to the industry) about the wood pellet industry in Canada. As more facilities convert to co-firing as a way of reaching government targets, Cana-dian wood pellet producers will continue to smile and ask, “How much do you need?” • John Tenpenny, Editor [email protected] Official Media Partner of: @CanadianBiomass 4 Canadian BIOMASS
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