To make this new business flourish, “Royal Wood Shavings takes care Granulco entered into a joint venture of marketing and distribution and with Essipit, a nearby Innu First Na-we take care of operations,” explains tion, and la Société de développement André Gilbert, Boisaco’s general man-économique de Sacré-Coeur. ager. “We could have bought the oper-Last year, Granulco made 1.25 mil-ations but we prefer to have a strategic lion 40-pound bags and some bulk partner. We are stronger together.” sales to reach a 25,000-ton production, Building partnerships is how Bois-still short of the facility’s 35,000-ton aco developed all of its sister compa-capacity. nies. “We don’t produce enough sawdust To make high-quality horse bed-to use Granulco’s equipment at 100 per ding, wood shavings are blown from the planer to the packing area via an Boisaco uses the residuals from its softwood sawmill to create a variety of cent,” says Éric Gravel, Boisaco’s quality aerial system. other products, including door panels, animal bedding and wood pellets. and production superintendent. To fill the gap, they started using The company has one market for poplar sawdust produced by Bersaco – its big shavings, another for its medi-another sister company 28 kilometres away – but they stopped um-sized shavings and the dust goes to the small animal market using it after customers complained about the smell generated (the dust sifted out because some horses are allergic to wood by the use of poplar. dust). This byproduct venture generates more than 800,000 To ensure the samwill’s byproducts are sent to the best appli-40-pound bags of horse bedding annually, and has created jobs cation, the mill installed a 8’ x 4’ Forano chip screen that sepa-for 15 people. rates the different chip sizes. With an annual production of 550,000 m 3 , Boisaco still had The small chips go to the company’s Sacopan door panel some byproducts left. So to use 100 per cent of the sawdust company, while the large chips are sold to pulp-making busi-and shavings, they made a plan to build a wood pellet plant. nesses, and the sawdust goes to Granulco or Ripco. Even when the markets deteriorated during the financial crisis “Everybody wins, because pulp and paper mills prefer big in 2008, Boisaco decided to go ahead and create Granulco in saw chips,” Gravel says. 2009 – a wood pellet company built on Boisaco’s sawmill site. A provider of Bulk Materials Handling Solutions Receiving | Screening | Sizing | Conveying | Stacking | Reclaiming | Ship Loading www.Bruks.com | [email protected] CBM_Bruks_septoct15_CSA.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2016-05-19 2:50 PM 11
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