OREANDA-NEWS. January 14, 2015. A new pellet plant in the village of Novaya Igirma, Irkutsk region (Eastern-Siberian part of Russia) constructed and started-up by Hekotek in November 2014 has now successfully reached the designed output capacity 30,000 tons of wooden pellets annually, as the company said in the press release received by Lesprom Network.

The plant owned by Lesresurs LLC is being operated by Rusforest Management Group LLC. Its launch enables to start economically reasonable use of the sawdust and partly pulpchips produced at the sawmill of the same owner. The reasonable use of pulpchips is actually a challenge for sawmills in several regions of Russia – since many local pulp and paper mills have difficulties with due payments for the raw material, the sawmills’ management have to give up chips deliveries to PPMs and instead send the chips to dump.

Start-up of the plant has been very much well timed from the market situation viewpoint – on major export markets it was just the beginning of heating season, when wooden pellets are in great demand.

Advanced technological solutions used for the new plant have been well tested in the previous deliveries of Hekotek. The plant is based on a pellet press (4.5 tons of pellets per hour) and a hammer mill by the Dutch producer CPM. Other parts of the production line – various conveyors and production units, including a drum dryer with a furnace for drying sawdust, were produced by Hekotek.

Hekotek also carried responsibility of general supplier of the new plant ensuring not only equipment delivery, commissioning and start up, but also smooth operation of the plant complex equipment.