able to store an additional 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes of wood. That would enable the facility to store supply for a week as opposed to a couple of days, Rainbow says. “Typically, you get your construction demolition wastewood, and they go out to a recycling centre and pay $40 to $50 a tonne to tip that raw wood,” Blais explains. “That recycling centre then processes and segregates the ferrous material, shreds it to a certain specification and sends it to us and then we pay X dollars per tonne for the wood.” “What we’re looking at doing is actually taking that raw wood from the construction and demolition companies, processing it on-site here and reducing our wood cost by 40 to 50 per cent, further than the 20 per cent we’ve already reduced it,” he says. The 20 per cent reduction Blais refers to involves the new wood contracts he and Rainbow negotiated. “An issue early on was the consistent supply, and it’s something Daniel has been able to address,” Blais adds. “In the past we brought a large number of both contracted and non-contract suppliers into the plant (21 suppliers in total) which created struggles for quality control and scheduling,” Rainbow explains. “We re-addressed that with targeting key suppliers to streamline the supply coming into the plant whose quality could be controlled better. With doing that it’s kind of levelled the marketplace as well.” Index Energy has four main contracts ranging between 7,500 tonnes per year (or five per cent of the supply), up to 40,000 tonnes per year. “We’re working very closely with the local town for solutions for their biomass material,” Rainbow says, adding that Index Energy strategically works with its suppliers by directing new wood source leads to them and having suppliers reciprocate that relationship. “I live by the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement; it’s something engraved into me by Toyota,” says Blais, who used to work in utilities for the company. He says he likes to be presented with a challenge on which he can continually improve. “This here [Index Energy] is a big project — a lot of challenges, there’s a lot of opportunities,” Blais says. “With the district heating, after we get the power generation production at 90 per cent availability, then we go into Phase Two, and that has unlimited potential in the community. We can literally change the economics of all our neighbours and make them profitable.” FUTURE OUTLOOK Blais and Rainbow say the goal is to become an environmental leader in the community and become a more active member overall to introduce the community to what Index Energy is all about. “We’re taking 158,000 tonnes of material that would otherwise end up in a landfill and not only that, we’re segregating as well, so it’s not wood and ferrous material, and aluminum all going to a landfill,” Blais explains. “It’s now segregated, we’re purifying it, now there’s a recycling avenue for that ferrous material. “We’re transparent and ethical and we’re here to be a big player and a big partner to the community,” he says. • FUEL | AIR | GAS | ASH www.processbarron.com | 205-663-5330 | 2770 Welborn Street Pelham, AL 35124 12 Canadian BIOMASS CBM_ProcessBarron_JulyAug16_CSA.indd 1 MARCH/APRIL 2018 2016-07-25 10:32 AM
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