The making of Pinetree Pellet Fuels Maine softwood pellets.. The Mill..

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Good day everyone. I had posed on a previous thread (see below) a small introduction but wanted to formally start a thread about our wood pellet mill in Mattawamkeag, Maine. If you are reading this for the first time my name is David Kidwell and I am one of of the founders of Pinetree Pellet Fuels. We will be specializing in manufacturing premium softwood wood pellets from locally sourced and cleaned wood chips right here in Maine.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/new-maine-pellet-mill.142172/

We will be a small scale, 2 tons per hour mill, with two complete 1 ton per mills. We are going this route for redundancy so if one mill goes down we will have another still operational. I have read the above thread posted here on Hearth.com and hope to clear up some confusion or misinformation with my post as we go along the journey to pushing the start button on day 1 of full operation.

I would like to thank Jim (webfish) at Hearth.com for letting us share this journey with all you wood pellet fanatics like myself :)

To start off I love my Quadrafire Mt. Vernon stove bought it back in 08', I believe, and had an issues with the heat plate cracking and flaking, but Quadrafire was aware of the issue, was the first year for the Mt Vernon if I remember correctly, and we got a replacement with no issues and no issue with the stove since. At one point we heated a 2,700sqft house with it and never used a drop of oil. Anyway enough about the stove back to the mill.

If you click the link above you can get some info from the local paper in the area who has been covering the mill and the steps as we go along the process. I will say there has been some misinformation in the papers as well, but when quoting a 3rd party sometimes that can happen. Nothing bad, just some dates and numbers were incorrect. No biggie in my book.

There are a few things that will different from our pellet mill then some of the big guys and that I will discuss down the road. What I will clear up now is that we will not be shipping a single pellet from our mill overseas. Made in the USA and we plan on keeping them here. So we can squash that assumption. Also the fact we have a purchase contract to pay 1/2 now and 1/2 one year later is cause lack of cash is also someone reading to much into what they read and not knowing the details of the agreement between the town and Pinetree Pellet Fuels. Always fun to watch people speculate, and I might of thought that to, but lack of cash is not the case with PTPF.

I have never blogged so this first post may seem boring but it is a brief introduction to the making of a wood pellet mill. I will be posting updates and pictures as we move along in the process of building the mill. I will try to keep you up to date as possible and if there is a lot of interest in following the mill setup process then maybe daily updates will be needed. I think the fun part will be interacting with you all and your thoughts, we will have a small lab mill where we will be trying different combinations of biowaste to see what we can get the most heat out of. Will be ::Fun.

Well for now that is about all, check out the link above for some other info i might of missed and I post later tonight with what the inside of our mill looks like now, pre pellet mill.

David
 
Good luck to you David
When will we get to try your product? what will we be looking at per bag?
May have been answered in your other post if so I missed it.
 
i'm closeby. i will test your pellets free of charge. ;lol

seriously though, i'm looking forward to trying your mill's product.
best wishes.
 
Good luck with your venture, David.
What will you be using for your raw material?
Will you be selling to local dealers only, or both dealers and retail?
Dan
 
Thank you all for the well wishes, everybody has been extremely supportive of the wood pellet mill.

Good luck to you David
When will we get to try your product? what will we be looking at per bag?
May have been answered in your other post if so I missed it.

We are pushing for Oct 1st to be producing for the 15'-16' winter season. At this time we aren't disclosing price.. more to come :cool:

i'm closeby. i will test your pellets free of charge. ;lol

seriously though, i'm looking forward to trying your mill's product.
best wishes.

We will have a lot of QC and test runs to get the pellet we are looking for before any go out the door. Don't want to sell anyone garbage pellets.

Good luck with your venture, David.
What will you be using for your raw material?
Will you be selling to local dealers only, or both dealers and retail?
Dan

Dan, we will be selling only premium softwood pellets. We will be testing different combinations to determine the highest btu blend/burn. Pine, Hemlock, Spruce, Fir, etc. Our sales model is part of what will make us different so at this time I have to be mum on this part... more to come..

Please everyone understand I want this to be a tour and a journey on how we are planning to set up our wood pellet mill. So please don't take offence if I don't answer specific questions as we are a long way away from hitting the start button and would rather not give an answer then answer improperly. If I quote prices now I could make us look bad if they have to rise for some reason, so some info will be disclosed as we get the process rolling a little further down the line. I hope everyone understands.

David
 
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Pinetree Pellet Fuels future mill floor...


gym.jpg
 
Are you going to keep the free throw arches?

Good luck BTW... Im sure you will do fine..
 
Yeh that's the ultimate man cave. Too bad its going to get all messed up.
 
Dang, that's not a bad looking gym floor. My kids would be all over that in a b-ball way.

Good luck.

Actually a sticky tile floor over concrete, unusual for a bball court in my opinion but i think it was also used as a cafeteria.

Are you going to keep the free throw arches?

Good luck BTW... Im sure you will do fine.

We plan on keeping the floor pretty much as you see it.

Yeh that's the ultimate man cave. Too bad its going to get all messed up.

I don't like to think of it as messed up but rather re-purposing it for its second life. Building has been empty since 2009.

You can keep track of the pounds per hour on the score board

And we plan on it, but keeping track of tons :cool:

Looking forward to progress reports ............

Thank you, we look forward to keeping you all connected and in the loop. Some things will be positive other things we will hit red tape and need to address, it is just part of the process and learning experience. The day I stop learning I might as well throw in the towel and fortunately i don't own one. :)

David
 
I`m sure your ROI is years to come with all of that equipment and set up cost. I hope the state is giving you guys a tax break on a start up company or at least investing in your interest. They do campaign on job creation.
 
couple of ounces of Willies' Reserve and several tons of Pinetree Pellets and next winter will be a breeze.
 
Of course... I think it's pretty good that you are sharing your journey!
We'll be patient... ;)

Dan

And we think its pretty cool people are somewhat interested, i didn't think there would be much interest, but have been surprised with the level of interest


I`m sure your ROI is years to come with all of that equipment and set up cost. I hope the state is giving you guys a tax break on a start up company or at least investing in your interest. They do campaign on job creation.

The people that I have personally delt with at the state level have been more then helpful. They are rockstars in my book!!

couple of ounces of Willies' Reserve and several tons of Pinetree Pellets and next winter will be a breeze.

3650 you got it my friend!! Well not a breeze for us as we are pushing to get up and running before fall and probably no slowdown till next summer (hopefully) :cool:
 
Figured you all might think this is cool, was our first CAD layout of 1 line from hammermill to bagging station.


View attachment 157349

Kind of courious as I read about your journey...

What are you going to use for fuel for your dryer, planning on a pellet boiler with HX units, or NG or oil? Are you going to contract with local wood industries for excess to pelletize or are you going to harvest trees yourselves? I presume you'll use a commercial ring extruder, that takes some serious electricity to run.....

I do know that when contracting, your feedstock can vary greatly from load to load delivered and that can impact your product quality adversely.

Are you planning on a pellet only operation or briquetting and bio-mass production at some point in the future as well?

Considering the market, yoiu should be instantly profitable.
 
And we think its pretty cool people are somewhat interested, i didn't think there would be much interest, but have been surprised with the level of interest

Hey, us pellet heads are interested in just about anything that will help us feed our stoves while fostering competition, which helps keep our costs down. Hey, and in the future maybe you can share some of what some of the causes of pellet variation between batches / years is. Helps us understand something that is very frustrating to me (nothing like buying several tons of a brand that you had good luck with last year only to find it is crap for you this year while other "less-than-premium" pellets run fine). And maybe, just maybe, some of our feedback can help you along the way.
 
Kind of courious as I read about your journey...

What are you going to use for fuel for your dryer, planning on a pellet boiler with HX units, or NG or oil? Are you going to contract with local wood industries for excess to pelletize or are you going to harvest trees yourselves? I presume you'll use a commercial ring extruder, that takes some serious electricity to run.....

I do know that when contracting, your feedstock can vary greatly from load to load delivered and that can impact your product quality adversely.

Are you planning on a pellet only operation or briquetting and bio-mass production at some point in the future as well?

Considering the market, yoiu should be instantly profitable.

Some good questions Flip ;). We are making softwood pellets from sourced chips/sawdust from a supplier just 8 miles up the road from us and they have agreed to an annual contract based on our needs, so our product should be consistent from day to day and truckload to truckload. We have no intentions to produce biobricks at this time and probably won't unless we feel the market calls for them. Commercial everything my friend, can't produce on a commercial level with a flat die setup, not for wood anyway.

Though we are making softwood pellets we will be burning biomass hardwood in our boilers as it is cheaper then clean softwood, i know odd but its more cost effective to do it this way.

LOL I can only wish we are instantly profitable, will take some time, but we are a small operation with much more control over our finished product so hopefully our customers return year after year.

David
 
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Hey, us pellet heads are interested in just about anything that will help us feed our stoves while fostering competition, which helps keep our costs down. Hey, and in the future maybe you can share some of what some of the causes of pellet variation between batches / years is. Helps us understand something that is very frustrating to me (nothing like buying several tons of a brand that you had good luck with last year only to find it is crap for you this year while other "less-than-premium" pellets run fine). And maybe, just maybe, some of our feedback can help you along the way.

Bogie I can't speak for other mills, but as long as you are sourcing the same raw material and you keep your process the same from year to year the pellets should remain the same. Just like baking a cookies, if you added an extra egg, or left them in a 2mins longer then normal they will be different then the last batch. If you pelletize material at 10% MC when you usually process it at 12 or 13% you may end up with a pellet that is not of the same quality.

ANY and ALL feedback from you all will be taken seriously as you are the ultimately the end consumer. A good business listens to their customers feedback and improves or makes changes as needed based on this feedback.
 
You'll do fine with consistency and you will have dedicated customers up that way, if this year was any indication of supply versus demand. Good luck, or should I say no luck needed, just consistent product and availability.
 
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