Media spotlight on Canadian wood pellet industry
February 12, 2013
By The Globe and Mail
February 12, 2013, Toronto, ON – The Canadian wood pellet industry’s emergence as a global producer was featured in a Globe and Mail article highlighting the industry “as one of the few bright lights in the wood industry.”
“This is an industry invented from nothing,” Gordon Murray, executive director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada, told The Globe.
“The industry got started by a bunch of entrepreneurs that found a use for the waste material that went into beehive burners,” says Mr. Murray. “What’s been in our favour is that we have a big sawmill industry with a lot of residue, sawdust, bark and so on.”
Since the new millennium, Canadian companies have delved into this market and are being rewarded with a positive global outlook from Europe and an emergent Asian market, inspiring more production and heavier export.
“North America is becoming a major producer. Our production in Canada and the U.S. has grown in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years from very little to probably producing [a combined] five million tonnes this year,” explains Gerry Van Leeuwen, vice-president of International Wood Markets Group (IWMG).
According to a report by the IWMG last November, estimated pellet consumption was 14.4 million tonnes in 2011 with Europe making up 84 per cent. But demand is expected to balloon by more than 300 per cent to 45 million tonnes by 2020.
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