German Pellets plans second giant wood pellet plant in U.S.

Just as it is readying to open a 500,000-metric ton wood pellet production facility in Woodville, Texas, German Pellets announced that it plans to build an additional 1 million-metric ton plant in Louisiana, with construction slated to begin this month.

The plant will be located in the central Louisiana town of Urania, which has a population of about 1,300. German Pellets expects the new plant to create around 500 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

Much of the facility’s infrastructure is already in place—including a railway siding—as it is the former site of a Georgia Pacific fiber/particleboard plant that closed over a decade ago.

As it is doing with pellets produced from its Texas plant, German Pellets will export production from the new facility. “Pellet consumption worldwide is on the rise, especially in Europe,” said German Pellets CEO Peter Leibold. “This means that the construction of large production capacities is necessary.”

Shipping will be done via the harbor of Port Arthur on the Gulf of Mexico, a deep-water port where the company operates 51 storage and loading systems.

Completion of the plant is scheduled for April 2014.

Earlier this year, German Pellets, which operates 14 other pellet plants throughout Germany and Austria, announced that it was preparing for construction of a storage shed for wood pellets on the Wismar seaport in Germany, along with Seehafen Wismar GmbH.