MILLINOCKET, Maine — Construction activity at the site of what will be New England’s first torrefied wood machine has begun, workers said Thursday.
Demolition work on the foundations of several buildings and other prep work at the Great Northern Paper Co. LLC mill on Katahdin Avenue ramped up this week with about a dozen workers on site Thursday.
About the only thing missing, Cate Street Capital spokesman Scott Tranchemontagne said, is a start date for construction of the $48 million torrefied wood machine.
“We hope to have that soon,” Tranchemontagne said Thursday.
As of this week, a dozen construction workers are on the site, with as many as 60 workers expected before the work is done, Tranchemontagne said.
Local contractors are handling most of the construction work on site. The workers hope to remove the old foundations first to make way for foundations of new structures.
The work follows by about a week a one-year anniversary celebration of the revitalization of the paper mill in East Millinocket held by leaders from GNP and Cate Street Capital, parent company to GNP and Thermogen Industries LLC, the subsidiary that will produce the torrefied wood. D&S Engineering of Millinocket is Thermogen’s representative at the Millinocket site.
Cate Street plans to open the Thermogen plant at the site of its Millinocket paper mill in the fall of 2013. Cate Street bought the mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket in October 2011.
The company’s goal: to use about 240,000 to 250,000 tons of wood waste to produce 110,000 tons of torrefied wood per year at the Katahdin Avenue mill site. The torrefaction facility would operate round the clock, draw less than 0.5 percent of the water the paper mill drew, and send wastewater to the town’s water treatment plant representing less than 0.2 percent of the wastewater plant’s total capacity.
The plant’s customers — coal-fired power plants in Europe and the United Kingdom — will use the torrefied wood to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
A type of microwaved wood pellet that burns as hot as coal without coal’s pollutants, torrefied wood burns about 30 percent hotter than typical wood pellets.
Plans call for 20 to 25 workers to be hired to operate the single torrefied wood machine. If all goes well, company officials hope to eventually place as many as five machines on the premises.
The prep at the site has been going smoothly, workers said. Their activity has been the first on the site since the paper mill there shut down in September 2008, not counting demolition work done by the previous company owner.
20 jobs? Yikes.
You are a pessimist, I am an optimist. 25 jobs times 5 is 125 jobs. Where do you get 20 jobs? Never mind. But you will only consider how many likes you get in your responses versus reality.
I’m a realist. Show me something that indicates that they’re going to need 20-25 people for each machine. I get that they’re going to hire 20 people now, but this is going to be a highly automated plant and the work is not labor intensive. Other charcoal factories, including those in Mississippi get by with 25 people.
I will not feed you.
These machines require support. Truckers loggers, mechanics, etc etc etc. Although we know you would rather see park attendants and stuffed toy moose kiosks
he can’t figure that out! he is just out to say negative things about good things. can’t figure out that this country is built with small businesses, geezzzzz
crapola
better than nothing. really, a few years ago I thought the government should just buy out most of the home owners and bulldoze most of the town rather than support them with welfare in perpetuity. If they have 5 of these machines, it will generate jobs in the logging industry as well. The Millinockets will never be as prosperous as when the mills employed over a thousand people, but now I think it does have a future with a much scaled back paper/wood industry AND outdoor recreation.
Even at 20 jobs with benefits and a living wage is better than none. Cate Street has done everything so far they said they would do. Just keep paying your taxes for you share of he landfill you own a part of. That’s if you work.
Exactly how many people do you employ? 20-25 jobs at the plant plus all the jobs that contribute to plant, add up to alot more.
20 jobs is a start. Don’t knock it. It is private industry doing what they can. Capitalism at work.
hey, it’s a start! rome was not built over night.
It too bad that they felt the need to bring an out of state contractor in to do this work. I’m sure there are plenty of Maine companies that have the capabilities to do this.
Local contractors are handling most of the construction work on site
didn’t you read the article that they are using local contractors and local engineering?
This is great news for the area. Cate Street has been a great asset to the area. Too bad people from the area don’t wanna believe in them as I’ve heard from some of the folks. Hope they don’t represented the whole town and communities.
Good on em. It’s a start
Okay, but, you guys be careful up there, the Oxford Casino almost got shut down for extreme environmental footprints, I am torrefied the some second rate lawyer could hold this up for years,
get it built before anyone finds out.
LOL….Steve Hinchman is such a hack!
That’s being very nice….!
Hinchman the greenies eco-henchman is as guilty of Maine’s economic downfall as King, Baldacci or Michaud….!
We got these mills back up and running because of people like LePage, Raye, Conlogue and even Herbie Clark.
Other than Hinchman the eco-henchman, the only other immediate Quimby threat that could shut these mills down comes from within our own town council….
.
Why is this wonderful product being sent overseas?
Can it be utilized here in America to help produce energy?
Save on shipping costs.
This is where those R&D Bond’s that LePage keeps sitting on come in. Have a State Building, or a non-profit building, that’s uses a oil-fed boiler system converted, using some of the Bond money, to refit the boiler to use the new bio-coal. Keep track of actual, not estimated, costs and see how well it work’s. Cate St stands to benefit from the potential sales to a domestic market, Maine benefit’s from using a on-hand renewable fuel and the public benefits from both the lower cost’s, increased savings and, what really needs to be kept track of, lower pollution that impacts on public health, not to mention the potential for the jobs requiring the retrofitting of these oil boiler systems to work with bio-coal. The potential of ‘Clean Coal’ may be here. But only if it’s explored and that requires R&D and funding. And that’s what LePage is preventing, progress. And that’s good for how many ?
Are you by any chance a politician? Cause you really don’t understand anything about this product do you?
Mike-
In an ideal world that would be great, “”but”” first you would have to get Cate Street on board, then get the Governor on board— thats not a hard sell on these two, “”Until”” you hit:
*The Town Council- with certain members now siding with Ol Quimby they will first over regulate, and over tax any proposed technology,,, then they will become the land lord and drive out those they don’t agree with.
*The Green Machine; other than the highly evolved town council, the greenies eco-henchman lawyer Steven Hinchman will stand in the way of any progress.
Why is this wonderful product being sent overseas? To offset SO2 and mercury emissions in older european power plants which burn coal. The europeans don’t have much of a choice and they don’t have very much inexpensive wood to utilize.
Can it be utilized here in America to help produce energy? Sure but there are much cheaper alternatives for US plants. Natural gas for one.
Save on shipping costs. Shipping costs will be minimal compared to the cost of production. 100% electricity. Yikes!!
Thanks, Now I am smarter.
Every little bit helps.
We got these mills back up and running because of people like LePage, Raye, Conlogue and even Herbie Clark.
This good news must be really getting Ol Quimby all upset… :-)
Other than the greenies lawyer Steven Hinchman the eco-henchman, the only other immediate Quimby threat that could shut these mills down comes from within our own town council….