Caption: These pellets made from compressed pine tree pulp can be used as fuel to power factories or to generate electricity. Green Circle Bio Energy Inc. is building a plant in Jackson County to produce the pellets for export.STEELE CITY
Steele Citys development appeared to be off to a promising start 100 years ago, said Bill Stanton, when a land and improvement company set up shop there in anticipation of the Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay Railroad.
Stanton, Jackson County Development Council executive director, said the company initially operated a small turpentine still there, but little else in the way of new business materialized over the ensuing decades.
He said the drive to bring a major business to Steele City has taken a century, and now the towns wait is over with the arrival of the worlds largest wood pellet production plant.
Steele City, just south of Cottondale, is home to Green Circle Bio Energys new 225-acre wood pellet facility, and the Panama City-based company held a groundbreaking ceremony and luncheon Tuesday to celebrate the start of construction.
Green Circle President and CEO Olaf Roed said the facility, which will have a maximum annual production capacity of 550,000 tons upon completion, is right on schedule.
Roed said construction activity at the site should ramp up in the early summer, when the company also will start recruiting for the bulk of its employees.
By fall, Green Circle will install all of its major equipment, he said.
Before the end of the year, well have trial production, Roed said.
Workers will weigh trucks carrying wood fiber before they enter the Green Circle facility, said Gene Nobles, vice president with Marianna-based David Melvin Engineering.
Once weighed, monster forklifts will unload the trucks, with the wood stacked in storage.
From there, it will be put on conveyors and debarked, Nobles said, with the bark placed in a separate pile on-site.
Machines will chip the wood up like particleboard, and those chips will go in a large pile near the center of the facility. After the chips are pulverized, they are put through a drying system and then placed in a hammermill, Nobles said.
Once the pellets have been through all of the plants processes, another conveyor belt dumps them in nearby rail cars for shipment south to Port Panama City.
Nobles said the bark and wastewood generated from the pelletization process would be used as fuel for the dryer furnaces.
To answer the question of what a wood pellet looks like, Green Circle placed samples from a 40-pound bag in the center of luncheon tables at the Jackson County Agricultural Center Conference Room.
A single wood pellet is small enough to fit between a persons thumb and forefinger.
It also might look appetizing to certain animals, said one Cottondale city official.
When I first saw them, I thought they were rabbit food, said Cottondale City Manager Willie Cook.
Regardless of how the pellets look, Cook said the pellet plants opening comes at a time when Cottondale is expanding its city limits, with planned improvements to its wastewater and water infrastructure.
Projects like Green Circles help nearby Cottondales efforts to progress, Cook said. He said he expects a lot of new businesses, restaurants, and possibly industry to move into the town in the near future.
We dont know exactly what expansion will be, but we know itll be big when its all over with, Cook said.
The majority of the towns residents welcome the plant, he said.
Rep. Marti Coley, RMarianna, said there was an air of excitement in Tallahassee about renewable energys potential, fueled by projects like the Jackson County pellet plant. She said the Green Circle facilitys impact would be far-reaching in the northern part of the state.
I look at this and think, right here in Jackson County, we are really making history, Coley said.
