Red Rock port plans: developer looks to supply Ontario, export market with wood pellets.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: THUNDER BAY

Justus Veldman thinks there's a homegrown solution to supply the Thunder Bay Generating Station with wood pellets instead of importing them from Europe.

At the same time the Sault Ste. Marie developer wants to bring industry back to the Township of Red Rock with his ambitious plans for a commercial harbour project and a specialty wood pellet plant.

Veldman's company, Riversedge Developments, hopes to finish demolishing the former Norampac linerboard mill buildings by fall in order to have the waterfront property "shovel ready" to invite industry and investors to the scenic community on the shores of Lake Superior, about an hour's drive northeast of Thunder Bay.

Operating under the project banner of North Port Canada, Veldman is working with an undisclosed Dutch company to bring torrefied pellet technology to Canada and build a new forest products mill on the 860-acre property to support both the local market--including Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and export customers.

After his extraordinary success in remediating the former St. Marys Paper site in the Sault, Veldman was approached by the township in the fall of 2013 to see if he would be willing to do the same there. The mill, which closed in 2006, had been taken over by the municipality on tax arrears.

After acquiring the property last year, Veldman hooked up with Essar Port Global Holdings, a subsidiary of the multinational that owns Essar Steel Algoma in the Sault. The two parties inked a memorandum of understanding in March to design, build and operate a port facility.

Located just off the Trans-Canada Highway, Veldman said Red Rock's attributes are obvious: it's a natural harbour with deep water, power, natural gas and rail connections.

Late last summer, CP Rail lifted sections of a spur which ran down to the mill, but Veldman's company has acquired the track bed and rail bridges, and plans to lay down new rail.

He envisions Red Rock as a "feeder port" driving traffic across Lake Superior to a proposed $120-million to $150-million Port of Algoma in the Sault, now in the planning stages.

Conceivably, barges filled with Red Rock pellets and other forest products from north shore communities like Marathon, Wawa and Thunder Bay could...