Logistically, developing a new plant in Smithers was also a good fit, Reitsma says. The facility is located roughly 350 kilome-ters away from the Westview Wood Pellet Terminal, the company’s wholly-owned port in Prince Rupert, B.C., which makes transpor-tation of the pellets both cost and carbon footprint efficient. AN EFFICIENT DESIGN BUYING INTO PINNACLE’S SAFETY CULTURE Likewise, construction of the facility was efficiently executed. It began in March 2018 and finished on time in November. “The way that we build projects is by contracting more than 80 per cent of the project costs before commencing construction, including major equipment and our installation crews. As a result, on site execution is highly focused on ensuring that the equipment is expedited to the site in a timely manner and that the installation crews are able to safely meet their schedule,” Reitsma explains. The partnership budgeted $33 million to both acquire the Newpro site and build the new facility. The company has hired 20 full time employees to run the operation. At full capacity, the new facility will produce 125,000 metric tonnes per year. Currently, it is in the initial phases of produc-tion, but Reitsma expects the plant to be operating at full capac-ity in the latter half of 2019. The plant runs a mix of fibre – roughly half is traditional sawmill residuals, such as sawdust and shavings, and the rest is harvest residuals – primarily supplied by West Fraser. These re-siduals go through the standard process to become wood pellets, Reitsma says. “We’ve got drying, particle size breakdown, and then the pelletization process and shipping. “Given the size of the plant, we’ve been able to come up with a very efficient design for that level of production,” he adds. The facility was built along the same lines as the rest of Pin-nacle’s fleet, using equipment the company is already familiar with, including a Stela dryer, with Bliss hammering capacity and Andritz pelletizers. In fact, one of the main reasons for choosing these suppliers was the repeatability of performance, Reitsma says. “We’ve got a higher probability of repeatability of performance when we’re using equipment that we’ve learned through management ini-tiatives to optimize, and that’s really what drove us towards the suppliers that we selected for Smithers.” Ultimately, the pellets produced at Smithers will be integrated with the supply from Pinnacle’s other mills, to be exported to customers in Europe and Asia through Westview. The construction of this plant was not without its hiccups. “There’s always challenges in construction – that’s why we have a great team that can overcome those challenges, and I think they’ve done a nice job of not allowing the things that did arise to stand in their way of delivery,” Reitsma says. He emphasizes how impressed he was by the team, includ-ing Chris Barber, Pinnacle’s general manager of strategic capi-tal, Darren Swaan, the senior project manager, John Grime, the construction manager, Jaden Tupper, the junior project manager, and Bill Penno, the safety officer on site. Speaking with Canadian Biomass , Penno agrees that there were a few challenges during construction, but says that the project ran smoothly overall. Penno, whose formal title is construction safety advisor at Pinnacle, was in charge of worker safety at the site. “Every construction worker is coming from a different back-ground,” he explains. “We’re trying to get everyone working safely together, trying to get them to buy into Pinnacle’s safety culture. “Although I do not have a role in the plant’s operational safety on a day-to-day basis, anytime I am at the plant, I try to look out for the safety of everyone while I am there, construction workers and operational workers alike,” he adds. Each employee received safety training before starting work, and several policies were implemented to ensure continued safety. One of those policies is “Take Two,” where employees are en-couraged to stop and take two minutes to think about their task and how to do it safely, says Penno. Part of this includes performing field level hazard assessments (FLHAs), whereby workers identify all the hazards and risks associ-ated with a task before starting it, and reassess if something changes during the task. Penno recommends this as a safety best practice. Other steps include “working safely for yourself, for your family, and your coworkers,” he says. In the event of an emergency, Pinnacle has several protocols in place, such as confined space rescue and rescues from height. “If we had to go into confined space, we’d always have a res-cue team behind, depending on the space we went into,” Penno explains. “If it’s a space that we could rescue ourselves, we would practice getting the first aid equipment to the work platform, onto the lift and securing it, and then bringing it down to the ground and treating the person on the ground.” For such rescues, Pinnacle hires outside agencies to provide training. 12 Canadian BIOMASS CBM_Rawlings_JanFeb19_CSA.indd 1 2019-01-04 7:57 AM WINTER 2019
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