THUNDER BAY – A new owner with Northern Ontario roots thinks he’ll be able to more than double production at the former Rentech pellet plant in Atikokan.
Mark Guillemette, CEO of Bio Power Sustainable Energy Corporation, on Thursday said he envisions the day when the factory is pumping out 110,000 tonnes of commercial grade and residential heating pellets annually.
The company’s current contract with Ontario Power Generation calls for about 45,000 tonnes of pellets each year.
“There’s a residential heat market that we’re looking to target both locally, here, and worldwide,” said Guillemette, who hails from Chapleau, Ont., a community situated about 620 kilometres to Thunder Bay’s east.
He added he expects to maintain the 25 employees that work at the plant, saying he’s hopeful that number will grow as production increases.
Guillemette said they’re currently making slight adjustments to the equipment in order to ramp up production.
Rentech, a U.S.-based company, filed for bankruptcy late last year, but reached an agreement to sell the mill to True North Timber, Bio Power’s parent company.
In the run-up to opening the Atikokan plant, Rentech was given a conditional $1-million grant to open, in addition to $2.5 million in funding provided for the company’s Wawa plant, which was idled more than a year ago.The province is trying to recover the latter amount.
Guillemette said they plan to take things slowly.
“We want to get it up to the proper capacity that its able to do right now. We do have some capital improvements that we want to do to it right now, that we have planned for mid-summer,” he said. “We’re hoping to carry that on at the end of April.”
He said he expects to be up to full production levels once production contracts have been signed.
“We’ve got teams of sales all over, some consultants who are working very hard,” Guillemette said. “We just went to the trade mission in Italy as well looking for markets over there. There are plenty, but right now we’re just doing our due diligence on it and hopefully we’ll get up doing that soon.”
