Putting Together a Pellet Mill Map

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Lisa Gibson February 07, 2012

For the past couple months, I’ve been putting together a list of pellet mills in the U.S. and Canada for Biomass Power & Thermal’s first pellet mill map, set for release with the May issue of the magazine. I’ve assembled a list of more than 200 U.S. mills and almost 60 Canadian ones. But I’m not done yet.

I think I’m nearing the end of my list of U.S. pellet mills because I’m running out of places to check for directories that I can incorporate into mine. I was surprised at first to find that Canada had significantly fewer plants, but it does make sense. I do have a ways to go before I’m finished with Canada’s list, but the country exports upwards of 80 percent of its pellets. That means mills with much larger production capacities than mills that are bagging their pellets for sale on domestic markets, which the majority of U.S. producers do as of right now. I’ll find out if my hypothesis is correct once my editorial team begins making calls to all the plants in a couple weeks, but I think that’s what we’ll discover.

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