Great Northern paper

With Great Northern re-opening their paper mill in East Millinocket next month, rail service comes into question. Who will have the rights to the yard and the line from there to Brownville Juction? Would it be New Brunswick Southern or Eastern Maine railroad?

MEC407, Are you planning on starting a New Brunswick Southern Class 11 forum/thread sometime soon?

thank's,
Peter

The East Millinocket branch still belongs to MMA. EMRY runs Brownsville Jct east to Canadian Border and MNR runs Millinocket yard north to Madawaska including PI cluster. MNR has haulage rights from Millinocket south to Brownsville Jct which they use occasionally. This is good news for MMA and the Moosehead Sub. I'm glad the old name has returned, just hope their intentions are what they say they are.

Creating a new forum isn't something that moderators are allowed to do, but I'll pass the suggestion along to the site admin. For now, feel free to continue to post Maine Northern stuff here, and I think there's a NBSR/EMRY thread in the New England forum. I'm not sure if NBSR/EMRY/MNR have enough discussion to warrant their own forum, but I will pass along the suggestion.

MEC407 wrote:Creating a new forum isn't something that moderators are allowed to do, but I'll pass the suggestion along to the site admin. For now, feel free to continue to post Maine Northern stuff here, and I think there's a NBSR/EMRY thread in the New England forum. I'm not sure if NBSR/EMRY/MNR have enough discussion to warrant their own forum, but I will pass along the suggestion.

Sounds good, thanks buddy.

Peter

Has there been any noticeable uptick in traffic to/from GNP? Has MMA added any new train starts in the area to handle any increased traffic?

Thanks
Brian

Bangor Daily News wrote:MILLINOCKET, Maine — Cate Street Capital has purchased for more than $20 million the North American rights to the technology to manufacture biocoal, a huge step toward adding the production of treated wood at its Katahdin Avenue paper mill and creating several hundred jobs, officials said Thursday.

Link to the article was posted on the MM&A Yahoo group a few days back. Wanted to share it here, and ask what Biocoal is?

If its actually a coal and ships in unit trains, it would be huge business for the MMA! Based on some quick math and numbers found on other threads, if the Biocoal takes off, and they produce their million tons for export to Europe, would put rough income for the biocoal moves in the 13-14 million $ range. We might see a few more MMA Painted units.

Also, I can't quite figure it out, maybe I'm just not reading it clearly enough, but will the E. Millinocket mill produce paper while Millinocket proper produces Bio Coal, or is the Bio Coal to be a third mill in addition to the paper machines in Millinocket and E. Millinocket?

Edit* Oops, forgot the link http://bangordailynews.com/2011/12/01/b ... s-for-20m/

I think the plan is to have to torrified wood produced at both plants.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/10/b ... mill-site/
Construction going to start by September on torrefied wood machines in Millinocket, hopefully.

Anyone have insight on plans regarding export? Searsport is the obvious guess, but...

Export vessels would likely load at least 25-30,000 tons. The stated production rate is ~9,000 tons/month. As such, the chosen port facility would need at least 30,000 tons/three months of ground storage. The port facility would also need a conveyor system. Two questions: 1. Does Sprague in Searsport have the available ground space for storage? 2. Is Searsport's existing conveyor system capable of ship loading, or is it a one-way system?

Eastport just spent over $6 million in taxpayer funds on a new conveyor system. Makes me think that it's not outside the realm of possibility that trucking to Eastport would be considered as a possible option.

"The plant would hire 25 full-time workers and begin producing, from about 240,000 to 250,000 tons of wood wastes, about 110,000 tons of torrefied wood pellets annually for European sale in summer 2013, Frecker said. Four wood trucks per hour would visit the site in daytime."

If you do some rough estimates with the projected annual output of 110,000 tons that translates into roughly 300-400 tons/day and with high capacity truck trailers (20-30 ton) could mean 10-15 truck loads/day or 3-5 80 ton woodchip gons/day. East Millinocket-Eastport 6 hour roundtrip by truck, East Millinocket-Searsport 4 hour roundtrip by truck. New conveyor at Eastport vs rehab/rebuilding of conveyor at Searsport. Truck vs rail? Eastport vs Searsport? Pricing will be the major factor.

Also not brought up recently but had been in previous BDN articles, the proposed use of LNG to power the plant until a natural gas pipeline is built to the facility. Would this be a rail move?

I think that if the initial torrified wood project is successful, the plan is to expand the facility to produce much more. With Europe trying to reduce the use of fossil fuels (coal) to produce energy,
to comply with CO2 reduction mandates, it seems that torrified wood is a suitable replacement. I read much of what would be produced would go to the UK. I would think export through Searsport by rail would
be the primary means of transport, and especially after production increases. This product can be transported in open top rail cars (such as chip cars). Exposure to the elements does not break this stuff down nearly
as quickly as raw wood chips.....

The wood products plant moves forward, they're still hoping to break ground in January.

BDN article --> http://bangordailynews.com/2012/07/17/n ... new-plant/ <--To meet with the planning board and get going on the permitting process. Hope to be permitted by August so ground breaking can start in September and hope to be running a year from now. MMA must be hoping for this to all come together with no issues. Would be about the greatest thing to ever happen to this group since takeover.

More jobs coming to E. Millinocket as the second paper machine restarts.
BDN article. ---> http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/02/b ... g-machine/ <---

E. Millinocket Mill's manager jumped ship "to pursue other interests." He leaves behind a good reputation and upswinging business with about a 40 day backlog of orders to fill.

BDN Article--> http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/21/b ... y-resigns/ <--