Flambeau River’s Pilot Biomass Plant Turns White to Green

Apollo News Service

When Smart Paper, the local paper mill in Park Falls, Wisconsin, shut down in February 2006 more than 300 workers in a town of just 2,700 found themselves without jobs. The mill was Park Falls’ largest employer, but the rising cost of natural gas forced it to go bankrupt like countless other mills dying nationwide.

Six months later, Butch Johnson, a visionary entrepreneur who had attended grade school in Park Falls, re-opened the mill under the name Flambeau River Papers. Johnson rehired 70 percent of the laid off workers, and he honored their union wages, benefits and seniority. The CellMark Group, a $2.5 billion Swedish conglomerate and one of the largest paper distributors in the United States, provided capital and supplies pulp.

“In the 25 years I’ve been here we’ve had five different owners of the mill — very hard people to deal with,” says Shawn Morgan a third-generation mill worker and vice president of the local union. “But we hammered out a contract agreement with Butch while leaning over the back of a pickup truck in the parking lot.”

“One third of the town’s population was in big trouble,” he added. “Everyone I knew was set to leave town and do something else. What happened was a small miracle.”

Flambeau River Papers continues to provide paper for commercial printers and sheet or envelope converters - some converters buy Flambeau’s paper rolls to make sheets of various sizes or envelopes - within a 600-mile radius in the Midwest. But its biomass pilot project to turn wood scraps into steam to power the paper mill and diesel fuel for the market is drawing the most attention.

Toward A Fossil Fuel-Free Mill

Gasifying wood to make energy could mean the difference between life and death for an ailing paper mill industry in the 21st century. Flambeau River BioFuels Company will be built near the existing paper mill and produce excess steam, which the company will sell to the nearby paper mill.

“Butch’s vision was to make the mill fossil fuel-free,” says Flambeau River President and Chief Operating Officer Robert Byrne. “Once the plant is in place, we can sell steam to the paper mill next door and isolate it from increases in the price of fuel.”

The biomass venture, which Byrne hopes will be operational sometime in 2010 following a pilot run this July, will produce 2,200 gallons of diesel fuel and 2,800 gallons of wax per day from 1,000 bone-dry tons of wood coming from a 75-mile radius around Park Falls in lumber-rich northern Wisconsin. Much of the wood comes tree tops, branches, and sawmill waste with no other marketable value. A small amount of chemicals such as pheramine will be added during the process, and an oxygen removal plant will produce steam for the paper mill.

“We’ll create a market for wood that doesn’t currently have a market,” says Byrne.

The technology for the biomass project already exists. But funding it presents a larger hurdle. Byrne admits that without grants, state and federal stimulus money, projects like these would never get off the ground.

Ben Thorp, an expert on biofuels who has published over 200 articles on the subject, says that the process of producing synthetic fuel through gasification has numerous historical precedents: South Africa did this when it was deprived of foreign oil because of international sanctions related to Apartheid, and during World War II Germany converted coal to liquid fuel when Allied bombing deprived it of oil.

“The current hurdle [for Flambeau River Papers] is one of capital because of the low price of oil,” says Thorp. “These plants are more expensive than making fuel out of oil. As long as oil remains at $40 or $50 a barrel, you’ll need assistance to make it work. You can’t just wait for the price of oil to reach $100 a barrel.”

Federal Assistance For A Biomass Project

So far, Flambeau has received help in the form of an earmark from Wisconsin Democratic Congressman Dave Obey and $1.9 million from the U.S. Forest Service to develop biofuels. The Department of Energy will deliver another $30 million this summer once pilot testing begins, and President Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act could free up even more capital.

Flambeau River Papers directly employs 315 workers in Park Falls, 254 of which are members of the United Steelworkers. A wood chip facility on site also employs 15, and Flambeau subcontracts to a copy-paper converter plant that employs 20. Another venture that will make industrial pellets to replace coal will eventually employ another 10 workers.

The average worker at Flambeau makes $18.85 an hour, and some make as much as $22. Employees enjoy full health insurance coverage. The company boasts an older workforce, with an average age in the late 40s. Many, like Shawn Morgan, followed in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers to work in the paper mill.

If Flambeau River Papers can secure enough funding for its biomass project, it will virtually eliminate the mill’s need for fossil fuels to generate electricity, and more importantly pave the way forward for an ailing paper mill industry.

“There are 100 paper mills in the United States, and their industry in decline,” says COO Robert Byrne. “But the paper industry is organized and used to receiving wood. This would be a natural extension for entire paper industry.”

Jacob Wheeler contributes to the Apollo Alliance from Chicago, where he lives and writes.