Wood snafu leaves mill in mothballs: BioSila aims for 2012 startup at Mattawa site.

• Author: Cowan, Liz
• Position: FORESTRY

A failure to secure a wood allocation from the province has delayed plans for a wood pellet plant near Mattawa.

BioSila purchased the former Tembee facility in September last year from the MattawaBonfield Economic Development Corp. (MBEDC) with plans to go into production early next year. However, no work has commenced on the site which has been idle since Tembed ceased operations in 2008. In 2009, MBEDC purchased the saw mill from Tembec for $1.

Brian Gard, BioSila director of strategic planing and operations said the company plans to move forward.

"We had an original plan with an original CEO that included producing 320,000 tonnes of biomass per year at the Mattawa site," he said "Unfortunately, that was predicated on the belief that we were going to get an allocation through the ministry (of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry) but that didn't happen."

According to a spokesperson for the ministry, the former Tembec mill had a commitment of Crown timber coming from three management units - Temagarni, Nipissing Forest and Algonquin Park Forest. The wood was included in the recent wood supply competition but BioSila was not successful. in securing it.

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The timber formerly allocated to the sawmill was offered to existing sawmills in the region through proposals submitted in the competition.

"We had to rethink whether we were going to go ahead or not but we just took a positive out look on it and just said we would," Gard said.

The CEO originally with the company has since left.

"We now have two investors who are ready to move forward and we are just finishing up our detailed process information to determine whether we can be profitable at about 90,000 tonne per year and it looks like we will be," he said.

"Once the decision is made, the plan is to have the plant open by May of next year."

BioSila has a customer in the U.S. that is a large power generation company that wants to buy biomass to mix with coal. The wood supply is to come from private sources.

"We are paying the bills every month to float the site while we decided whether it should go ahead or not and I think we have a business. I think there is something to be done there," Gard said.

Robert Corriveau, mayor of Papineau-Cameron Twp. and chairman of the MBEDC, said all stakeholders were led to believe the wood supply tied to the former...