PELLETS¦ Port Planning It certainly seems as though everything is all happening at once, as the third Maine deepwater port, the Port of Searsport, also has invested in an expansion. George Soffron, CEO of Maine-based Corinth Wood Pellets LLC, knows that because Corinth plans to begin exporting this year through the mid-Maine port. “Maine has great potential for export of pellets to Europe,” he says. “All three of these ports are underutilized for dry bulk product.”
Bulk commodities were common once out of the Northeast, Wood says, but most ports have transitioned more toward break bulk and liquid fuels. “So this is a positive direction, to go back toward bulk transportation, even though it’s a little different, it’s certainly something the ports have always been capable of doing.” F.E. Wood & Sons, a fifth-generation sawmilling company that has no sawmills in operation currently, has built relationships over the years with many small private landowners. Those relationships will facilitate the supply
Automated Stockpile Solutions Eliminate the operational costs and issues associated with manual materials handling. OPPORTUNITY IN EXPORTS: Corinth Wood Pellets LLC will begin exporting this year from a Maine port.
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PHOTO: CORINTH WOOD PELLETS LLC
hole in operations. “It really exposed the fact that the Port of Eastport was overleveraged, some would argue, in one singular customer, which is never a good business model,” Gardner says. The Port Authority Board realized it needed to make a choice: settle on the inevitable and die or invest in other assets and find a way forward, he says. “We saw another opportunity. European interests would be screaming for fiber,” Gardner says. The East Coast of the U.S. lacked port automation, and Maine is the last place where forest touches the ocean, he explains. “It all seemed to add up and point to the same thing.” And managers at the Port of Eastport weren’t the only ones to notice. “There are plans that people have been discussing quietly,” says Tony Wood, vice president of F.E. Wood & Sons, which has proposed a 312,000-metric-ton wood pellet plant that would export to Europe through another of Maine’s deepwater ports, the Port of Portland. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everything all happens at once in this area.” JANUARY 2012 | BIOMASS POWER & THERMAL 21