Our annual North American pellet mill map data collection effort is coming to an end, after several weeks of outreach. If you work in a pellet plant, it is very likely that your business received a phone call from us—maybe two, if we didn’t get to speak with someone the first time—and probably an email, too.

We’ve been doing this for several years now, and our data is becoming tighter and more accurate each year (and I must give credit to data and content manager Kolby Hoagland). That’s something we’re really proud of. There is so much going on in the North American pellet industry—I’m stating the obvious here—and it’s fascinating to see how things change from year to year.  We don’t like to speculate or guess about what’s going on at a facility; we do our best to get the words straight from the horse’s mouth.

During my phone calls, I encountered: a pellet plant that ceased operations last year due to lack of feedstock, and this year became a distributor instead.  A pellet mill that went from owned but idled to no owner at all. A pellet mill that began operating after last year’s map effort and is currently producing 45,000 tons, but will be upward of 100,000 tons by fall. A pellet mill that increased production by 20,000 tons since the last time we checked in.

Kolby will be working the numbers in the coming weeks to calculate capacity added in 2013, proposed projects added, projects that went from proposed to construction, the number of producers exporting to various countries, and so on. And we’ll package it up for you via the web and a printed map.

 We’re really looking forward to sharing the final product with you, and are confident that you’ll find this data interesting and useful.