Pellet Profile Quebec’s Pellet Leader Twenty years after its foundation, Granules LG remains the province’s biggest pellet producing facility By Guillaume Roy “ Twenty years ago, we produced 4,700 tons of pellets. We now produce as much in only two weeks,” Granules LG general manager Ken St-Gelais proudly states. With recent investments for improved automation and con-trols, the St-Félicien mill, in the northern Lac-Saint-Jean region, produced 120,000 tons in 2015. And it is expected to reach 125,000 tons in 2016. “We have improved our productivity by eight per cent run-ning on our same equipment,” St-Gelais explains. Not bad for a $400,000 investment used to upgrade many 20-year-old controls, cabling and electricity devices. As a result, there is now less downtime and everything runs more smoothly. “Investing in automation helped us standardize and increase the productivity, going from 2,000 tons per week two years ago to 2,350 tons per week today,” adds the mill manager, Carl Paul. All of these improvements were made internally. “We are now running at full capacity, and it will be hard to increase our production,” St-Gelais adds. BURNT TIMBER RECUPERATION Last year, Granules LG also added a few conveyors to bring new types of materials into the mulching system, which was previ-ously used to bring full burnt trees in the mill. In 2009–2010, Granules LG salvaged 50,000 m 3 of burnt forest. Back then, it seemed like a good way to increase the wood supply. “But pellet prices went down and it never reached that sum-mit again,” St-Gelais notes. Since pellet prices are about 10 per cent lower than in the late 2000s, harvesting and processing burnt wood is no longer profitable. To stabilize the supply, Granules LG decided to buy chips in-stead and mulch it in the mill. “Maintaining our supply is always a challenge. We have few suppliers with many big companies The Granules LG pellet plant has made adjustments when needed, such as finding international markets to offset weak domestic demands. 10 Canadian BIOMASS MAY/JUNE 2016
Canadian Biomass June 2016: Page 10
