BURNINGissues more wood pellet plantS Fibre Brain Company of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, is planning to own and operate a wood pellet factory. It is a locally owned start-up com- pany that will source raw material from local forests. The company is in the process of applying to the province for a wood plant operat- ing license. Fibre Brain expects to be operating by fall 2009 and hopes to produce 32,000 tons of wood pellets per year. A BC economic development agreement was signed with four Secwepemc First Nations: the Whispering Pines/Clinton, High Bar, Shuswap, and Little Shus- wap Indian Bands. The agree- ment allows the bands to apply for up to three million cubic metres of timber over 15 years to support an estimated $20 million wood pellet project. The bands’ joint company, Pelltiq’t Energy not enough waSte for pelletS Belledune, NB – Shaw Resources’ wood pellet plant in Belledune, New Brunswick, has received a temporary allocation of 50,000 cubic metres of birch and poplar from Crown land. “This temporary allocation will allow the company to meet its customers’ needs, and maintain all 15 jobs,” says NB Envi- ronment Minister Roland Haché. The plant, which began production a year ago, was de- signed to produce wood pellets from sawmill byproducts such as sawdust and shavings. The anticipated supply has been af- fected by slowdown in the saw- mill industry due to the slump in Sdtc fundS clean energy Mississauga, ON – Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has awarded $53 million in funding to 16 new projects that develop and demonstrate emerging clean technologies. Four of these projects involve the use of biomass in new processes to produce clean energy. These new investments bring SDTC’s total portfolio value to over $1.3 billion. lumber sales to the United States. The allocation will be purchased from companies that are already carrying out harvesting opera- tions on Crown timber licences 1 and 3 within a 100-km radius of Belledune. “All the roundwood we’ve been buying so far is from private woodlot owners, through the [North Shore Forest Products] marketing board,” said Gordon Dickie, general manager of Shaw Resources. “If I can buy all of the roundwood that I need, competi- tively, from the private woodlot owners, then that is our first choice.” Group Ltd., is working to secure construction, operating, and har- vesting partnerships, and a plant site. The facility is expected to be running in the Kamloops area by the end of 2010, with targeted production of 175,000 tonnes of wood pellets. 10 CanadianBIOMASS JUNE 2009
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