Pellet Profile New Quebec pellet plant adds value by using residuals from logging operations By Guillaume Roy • Translated by Peter Diekmeyer or many years, Groupe de Scieries GDS – a sawmill company in the Lower St. Lawrence and on the Gaspé River in Quebec – had been exporting raw wood by-products from their operations to Turkey and China, due to a lack of local clients. “There simply wasn’t sufficient con-sistent demand here,” notes Sylvain De-schênes, president of Groupe de Scieries GDS, which operates three sawmills in the Gaspé region and a planing mill in Ma-tane, Que. “We did not get much money when we sold unprocessed wood residues. But, the small amounts enabled us to con-tinue operations.” Groupe de Scieries GDS leveraged the services of a wholesaler to export up to five boatloads of 35,000 tonnes of wood residues per year when domestic demand was weakest. Last year, that dropped to two boatloads. The company also sold its sawmill byproducts to local customers, includ-ing F .F . Soucy, a newsprint mill owned by White Birch Paper in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Twin Rivers Paper Company in New Brunswick, and Resolute Forest Products in Baie-Comeau, Que. But, GDS’s new pellet plant in Lac-au-Saumon, Que., will now enable the com-Optimizing residuals F The Lac-au-Saumon plant will produce 100,000 tonnes of pellets per year. Photos courtesy Groupe de Scieries GDS. pany to put the raw materials created by their logging operations to better use. “The facility will provide us security,” Dechêsnes says, “because we now have more choices.” The new plant will have a production capacity of 100,000 tonnes of pellets per year. These pellets will then go to the Port of Belledune in New Brunswick, to be ex-ported for industrial use in Europe. GDS admits that investing in a pellet plant was not their idea originally. Another group of entrepreneurs had set up a plant known as Pure Pellets in Lac-au-Saumon. However, Pure Pellets was forced to close because it could not meet tough CNESST (Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail) safe-ty requirements and was denied a permit from Quebec’s environment ministry. Groupe de scierie GDS had been ana-lyzing possible opportunities to get into Industrial Clean Air & Compressed Air Fire & Combustible Dust Explosion Protection • Dust Mitigation Solutions • Air Quality Dust Particulate Monitoring • Sales, Parts & Service 1.866.291.6855 [email protected] www.airplusindustrial.ca 10 Canadian BIOMASS CB_SonicAire_Spring 22_GWJ.indd 1 SPRING 2022 2022-04-25 9:05 PM
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