One Warm Winter Bioenergy producers suffered in the winter of 2015-16 BIOMASS CANADIAN Volume 16 No. 3 Editor -Andrew Macklin (905) 713-4358 [email protected] Editor -Andrew Snook (905) 713-4301 [email protected] Contributors -Gordon Murray, Gabrielle Bauer, Bruno Zrno, Taylor Fredericks Editorial Director/Group Publisher -Scott Jamieson (519) 429-3966 ext 244 [email protected] 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 Circulation Manager Carol Nixon – [email protected] 450-458-0461 Canadian Biomass is published six times a year: February, April, June, August, October, and December. Published and printed by Annex Business Media. Publication Mail Agreement # 40065710 Printed in Canada ISSN 2290-3097 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 CIRCULATION Tel: (416) 442-5600 ext 3552 Fax: (416) 510-5170 [email protected] 80 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto, ON M3B 2S9 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 publication may be reprinted without the publisher’s written permission ©2016 Annex Business Media, 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 FEBRUARY 2016 A s we work our way through the spring months in Canada, we are starting to gain a clear understanding of the devastation dealt to the biomass and bioenergy industry during the warmest Canadian winter on record. The warmth spread from Ontario east to the Atlantic Ocean, blowing through the Atlantic provinces and sweeping up Maine in its wake. In some regions, there was so little snowfall that shovels rarely left the front stoop and the tradi-tional sound of snowplows were almost non-existent. While most people throughout the region were excited by the mild weather, it wasn’t just the ski and snowboarding industries that took a beating as a result. For those pro-ducing pellets, chips and dust for bioen-ergy, the ones already getting pummeled by the low cost of natural gas and oil, the warm winter was more akin to the knock-out punch in a 12-round slugfest. In Quebec, where much of the pellet production is for domestic consumption, many manufacturers found themselves running at high production levels without any home for the volumes created. Many of them entered the spring and summer with significantly larger stockpiles than usual, hoping to find a home for the pellets in the summer or fall. Atlantic Canada faced much the same dilemma: keep producing in hopes of finding a buyer or curtail production that would cause staff to be laid off? Much like Quebec, many of them soldiered on and kept production steady. The one saving grace for these produc-ers should have been the low value of the Canadian dollar, and how it would present opportunities to ship pellets south to the U.S. However, struck by a similarly warm winter, there were few takers for the Cana-dian pellet production. Thankfully, producers have taken steps to reduce the impact of fu-ture mild winters in Canada. A group of pellet producers from Quebec and Atlantic Canada travelled to Europe with representatives from the Quebec Wood Export Bureau (QWEB) in search of new markets for Canadian pellets. According to John Arsenault of QWEB, the group was the largest he has taken to Europe in search of new business opportunities. The results were positive, as at least two of the producers on the tour were able to gain new customers. Those new customers will help to sustain the wood pellet industry in Eastern Canada, and could allow those same companies to expand, or leave domes-tic quotas for other Canadian producers. Coming off of an extremely cold and bitter winter in the same region just one year earlier, it is great to see the pellet in-dustry in Eastern Canada stay resilient through such a difficult business climate. Even if the warm weather acted as an im-mediate catalyst to push these producers to look for new markets across the Atlan-tic, they used the resources available and made the smart business decision to look elsewhere. Smart business decisions like these, regardless of the original cause, will help keep the wood pellet industry going strong in Canada. • 4 Canadian BIOMASS
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