Silicon microchips sparked the Information Revolution. And today another type of microchip—made of wood—is fueling a global revolution to utilize one of the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy in the world—wood pellets. The Southeastern U.S. is becoming a major exporter of wood pellets, with production plants sprouting up along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
One of the early high-volume entrants into the industrial pellet market, feeding European power producers seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Green Circle Bio Energy’s plant in Cottondale, Fla., is one of the world’s largest, with an annual capacity of over a half million tons.
Register’s Enterprises, owned by Bill Register of Panama City, Fla., is a major supplier to Green Circle’s plant, delivering over 100,000 tons of microchips each year. Register collects most of the wood within a 60-mile radius of the plant, typically clearing unmerchantable wood for landowners who want to replant or clear their land.
“I put up a sign on a cutting job near here saying we were clearing land for biomass,” he says. “We had landowners coming over to tell us they had a 50- or 60-acre tract for us to clear. A two-week cutting job quickly became a four-month job. We ended up cutting about 600 acres.”
Production
Register chips the wood to Green Circle’s specifications—90% of the chips must be a half-inch or smaller—and delivers it by truck to the plant, where it is formed into pellets. The pellets are then shipped overseas to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and sold as a commodity on the Amsterdam energy exchange.
The pellets are an inexpensive way for utilities to meet European Union rules mandating that members must use renewables to generate 20 percent of their energy by 2020.
Green Circle opened the pellet plant in 2008, around the time the U.S. housing market collapsed. At the time, Register was running a site-development and land-clearing business he had started in the 1980s that up until then was going like gangbusters.
“For the past few years we had more work than we could handle,” he recalls. “We’d been through downturns before, so like most of the contractors in the area, we waited things out. We thought after a year or so things would come back to a more normal state.”
But when the economy didn’t pick up, Register made the decision to diversify: “If we hadn’t, I’m not sure we would still be in business,” he says. “I know a lot of good companies that had to call it quits. It wasn’t their fault. When major auto companies are filing for bankruptcy, you know you are going through extremely tough times.”
Register began chipping wood from land- clearing jobs and selling it to a local paper mill for fuel wood. But when the mill started to limit deliveries and set a quota, he started looking at other options.
At the time, Register was also providing fuel wood to Green Circle. The company approached him about producing a finer chip for pellet conversion instead of fuel, and after finding a whole-tree chipper that could produce a product to Green Circle’s specifications, he made the switch.
Register demoed several different chipper systems before settling on a Peterson 4300 drum chipper featuring a “microchip” drum that has 12 pockets to make four cuts per revolution versus six pockets and two cuts per revolution on a standard chipping drum. The Peterson also has a special drum chipper belly band designed to break up the chips so the average chip width is narrower
According to pellet producers, green microchips have less moisture variance overall, a range of about 5% as opposed to 15% or more variability among standard size chips. The smaller size microchips lower costs at the pellet plant by making the drying and refining processes more efficient.
Register’s Enterprises bought the Peterson unit in July 2012 and the system has performed well, he says. “It’s been a learning curve to some degree to keep it adjusted properly, but we’ve made the production we wanted and we’re doing a good job by making it to the plant’s specs because every load is sampled. Green Circle is ecstatic about the product. It’s really helped them boost production,” Register adds.
Diversifying meant that Register had to revamp his equipment lineup, which was composed solely of construction machines, including crawler dozers, excavators and backhoes. Today, Register runs Deere equipment including two 643K feller-bunchers and three 648H skidders (two dual-arch). He plans on switching soon to Deere excavators for loading the chipper.
“John Deere began calling on us during the worst of times around 2007, and they never gave up on us,” says Register. “They were the logical choice when we started buying forestry equipment, and they haven’t let us down.”
Register had never run forestry equipment before, so it was a new experience. “It’s completely different from the construction side. The logging environment is really tough on equipment. But we feel we have the best machines on the market for our needs.”
“John Deere began calling on us during the worst of times around 2007, and they never gave up on us,” says Register. “They were the logical choice when we started buying forestry equipment, and they haven’t let us down.”
Register had never run forestry equipment before, so it was a new experience. “It’s completely different from the construction side. The logging environment is really tough on equipment. But we feel we have the best machines on the market for our needs.”
Many of the operation’s jobs come from private landowners—and Register’s word-of-mouth marketing plan. “I usually put a sign out by the road where we’re working saying this is a biomass sustainable energy job with our contact information, and people start calling,” he says. A while back, a 60-acre one-week job north of Panama City turned into more than 400 acres of work over a couple of months after other landowners saw the job and became informed through neighbors or Register’s signage.
Background
Register started his construction company in the 1980s after he got out of the U.S. Army and then went to work for the Navy for several years. “I always figured I could make a better living working for myself than for someone else, and I haven’t looked back since.”
Over the years, Register has built a reputation for taking on big jobs, such as clearing the way for a four-lane highway or working in tough, wet conditions. His jobs have included clearing 500 acres at Tyndall Air Force Base and cleaning up after hurricanes Andrew, Charlie and Ivan. “I also worked all over Alaska for about five years, so I have worked in the tundra and about any other conditions you can imagine,” he adds.
Register wants to continue to grow his business into one of the largest chipping contractors in the Southeast. “I’m passionate about my family and my business,” he says. “Debbie, my wife of 39 years, worked in our business in the early years and supported me in all our endeavors, through good times and bad. Will, my son who currently runs day-to-day operations, has been, without question, my right-hand man for 13 years. My daughter Rebekah graduated from Florida State University with a civil engineering degree. She plans on joining our company in the near future to help with the construction portion of our operation.”
“I want to create a good workplace for my employees so we can do the best we can for our customers. I just want to live my life to the fullest. I think a lot of people wait in life to do things and then life passes them by. You’d better get after it every day or you are going to miss the train.”