Michael McKinnon
The competitive wood supply process launched late last year by the province is still months away from actually awarding any new wood supplies, and that “has severely hampered our project,” said Atikokan Renewable Fuels’ Ed Fukushima late last month.
“When Larry [Levchak, a partner in ARF] and I and Mayor Brown met with the MNR, the indication was that the forest allocation and award of a forest facility license was not going to be an issue. That was over a year ago. Since that time the new Ministry of Northern Development, Mimes and Forests created the competition for unused and underutilized forest species. We are now told at every level of government that this allocation will not occur until late fall of this year,” he said.
“This whole chain of events will surely cause us to miss this winter’s wood pellet heating season as supply contracts are negotiated now.”
ARF did get some forest allocation when it purchased the defunct Fibratech plant from the town in early 2009, but has been working to increase that allocation since first expressing interest in the plant.
Part of the issue now is that ARF wants to design its pellet-making machinery to take best advantage of the fibre mix they will be handling. “We do not know what fibre supply we will be getting, so we are unable to get our machines approved for production,” said Fukushima.
He added that the crew at work in the plant “will continue to make improvements to the equipment and infrastructure we will be using; the next step being refurbishing of the dryers to suit our product and testing to get our Ministry of Environment certification.”
In May, Mayor Brown wrote MNDMF’s Michael Gravelle about the issue, and was advised the province had received 115 submissions under the wood supply competitive process. The Minister indicated that it would take six months to review the submissions, meaning any award of new fibre will likely not come until October or November.
“We want to put our wood to work as quickly as possible, and this competition will help to do that in a fair and equitable manner,” he said.
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