Creating Safer Spaces

The company had built five mills from the ground up, and made important tweaks to a sixth that it had acquired. Its newest project, a partnership with Tolko Industries at the sawmill company’s Lavington site, provided a new opportunity to craft its vision of a pellet plant that would create a new industry standard.

One area of focus in that vision was the creation of a new model for the safest wood pellet plant possible. Pinnacle looked at the safety measures put in place at its other plant sites throughout B.C. and looked for ways to further improve its previous high standard.

The company looked at its enclosed spaces, spaces where equipment was constantly running as part of the production process, and opened up some of those areas. That provided more physical space for maintenance and inspections during production and shutdown. They also created additional entrances and exits, providing better access to confined areas.

The work done to create safer spaces was complimented by extensive measures to further control dust throughout the site and improve emissions from the plant.

The end product, completed with zero lost hours to injury, is one of the safest pellet production plants in Canada.

To learn more about the new Pinnacle Lavington pellet plant, be sure to read our feature story in the January/February 2016 edition of Canadian Biomass Magazine.