Atikokan receives wood allocation

After more than two years since Atikokan Renewable Fuels, an Ontario, Canadian-based company dedicated to the production of pellet fuel, completed the acquisition of a facility, it finally has all the wood necessary to begin operations at its pellet production facility.

The company received the full amount of 179,400m3 of poplar and birch wood, in addition to maintaining the 100,000m3 of wood that was attached to the closed FibraTech plant.

The company also has received $1 million (€0.74 million) from the Northern Ontario Heritage Find Corp. and $250,000 through the province's Northern Energy Program, which will go towards converting the plant's existing natural gas system to heat derived from wood-fibre.

With the wood allocation completed, work at the site can now begin and the company has implemented 'a very aggressive timeline,' that will see harvesting commence in eight months, before the production of wood pellets can begin for the domestic market's heating season.

When production commences, it is thought that 45 jobs will become available, in addition to 50 more in the harvesting and wood year operations.

The upcoming months will see Atikokan continue with the plant conversion project, which includes the installation of a new heating system, refurbishing the biomass drying equipment and presses and continuing with the environmental work on smoke stack emission and noise pollution controls.