Wood panel firm plans smaller biomass plant

A wood panel manufacturer on the border of Shropshire and north Wales, UK is to abandon plans for a massive biomass plant to produce its own heat and electricity.

Owners of the Kronospan factory will instead submit a new planning application to build a smaller plant that will generate heat only.

Mike McKenna, company chairman, says that the international owners of the plant had decided to change its worldwide strategy for biomass systems.

He says: 'The new scheme is a lower cost investment and the company has learnt from what has been happening on other sites.

'We want to generate heat by using our wood waste and it is much simpler to produce just heat than to generate heat and electricity.'

A planning application was due to be submitted to Wrexham County Borough Council today. It has been reported that a decision on permission for the project to go ahead will not be made until February 2014 at the earliest.

If permission was granted, the approved plan would then have to be revoked with the aim to start boiler commissioning in April 2014.

Kronospan is the UK's only fully integrated producer of wood-based panel products.