Proposed wood pellet plant in Australia awarded $5.5M grant

Australia-based Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers has been awarded a $5.5 million bushfire recovery grant from the Australian government to support the development of a biomass pellet plant and small-scale biomass power plant.

The facilities will be located on at KIPT’s timber processing hub at Timber Creek on Kangaroo Island, a region that experienced a devastating bushfire in December 2019. The island is located off Australia’s southern coast approximately 550 miles northwest of Melbourne.

Once operational, the pellet plant will be capable of accepting fire-damaged logs and any other logs that cannot be sold into export markets. Pellets produced at the plant are expected to be exported using the chip-handling facility at the proposed Kangaroo Island Seaport at Smith Bay.

The project will also include a small-scale power plant to support the pellet mill. That facility will be capable of dispatching base-load power to the electricity grid.

KIPT said due diligence work is underway on the pellet proposal with project partners. The company said it expects to achieve internal approval for the project during the first half of this year, subject to regulatory consent.

Additional information is available on the KIPT website.