(Host) Governor Jim Douglas will be in North Clarendon Tuesday 10:30am to celebrate the grand opening of Vermont’s first wood pellet plant.
As VPR’s Nina Keck reports, the new company is especially welcome in Rutland County, where the eight-point-three percent unemployment rate in August was the state’s highest.
(Keck) Katie Adams, president of the Vermont Wood Pellet Company, walks through the noisy plant and points to a long conveyor belt. A steady stream of pellets falls from the top into storage containers. A forklift operator is busy nearby loading 40 pound bags into trucks. Adams says they expect to make ten thousand tons of wood pellets this year. Though she admits they’re already talking about increasing that.
(Adams) "As you can see from our plant – they’re coming in to get twelve tons every two hours so we’re selling everything we can make!"
(Keck) Adams and her business partner Chris Brooks says they considered four potential sites for their pellet company before choosing the industrial complex in North Clarendon. Chris Brooks says the building they’re in had previously been used by a factory that made wood pallets so it already had many of the necessary noise and emission permits in place. Brooks says the location also provides good access to the raw materials they need.
(Brooks) "For us, for every job that’s inside the mill, there are 4 supporting jobs out in the woods working for us. These are independent Vermonters who are cutting trees, they are logging, driving trucks. And they are the ones who really support us. If they don’t’ bring us the logs we don’t make wood pellets."
(Keck) Brooks says they go through about 80 tons of raw pine a day – using what’s left after loggers have harvested the higher quality timber. Brooks says their plant employs 15 people who work three shifts five days a week. He says their goal is to use wood from a 30 mile radius and provide pellets for customers within fifty miles.
(Brooks) "You know when the product comes in from within 30 miles, it sort of breaks our bond with fossil fuels. In that because we’re not paying these freight fees, as fossil fuels go up our price doesn’t necessarily have to follow that and go up quite as dramatically."
(Keck) Company president Katie Adams wouldn’t say how much they’ve invested in the plant. But she says after months of experimenting with pellet recipes she feels confident they’ve got the right product, location and business model to succeed.
For VPR news, I’m Nina Keck in North Clarendon.