Residents of Rosthern, Sask., worry that a $200 million debranning plant planned for their town is dead in the water, but the developer insists the project is still afloat.
Hardly any activity has occurred on the site where, in the spring of 2006, a secretive company called International Debranning Inc. announced it would build a massive processing plant.
The company said it would use a patented process to fractionate bran from hulless barley to produce about 100 million beta-glucan-rich nutrition bars a year. The byproduct of the process would be used to produce 140 to 180 million litres of ethanol, rivaling the output of the Husky Energy plant in Lloydminster, Sask.
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The company originally planned construction for the fall of 2006 with grain deliveries scheduled for the spring of 2007.
But as the year draws to an end all that has happened is preliminary site preparation on the two quarters of land owned by International Debranning, said Rosthern mayor Doug Knoll.
In March, directors of the company met with 80 people from the town and the rural municipality, assuring them the project was still a go and that construction would begin in the fall of 2007, one year behind schedule.
“We were expecting some development by the end of August, at least that’s the impression we were left with,” Knoll said.
“August came and went, September came and went and now we’re into November and nothing much has happened.”
He has had no contact with company officials since the spring and is dismayed by news that former president Chris Findlay, who was the “guiding spirit” of the venture, is no longer with the company.
“I was the eternal optimist with regards to this project but what it tells me (is) somewhere something has changed and we haven’t been informed officially of what that change may be.”
Stephen Mader, who is listed as a director of International Debranning and, according to Knoll, the man now spearheading the project, said the facility has been delayed for a variety of reasons.
Chief among them is that work on an almost identical project the company plans to build simultaneously in Oregon has dragged on longer than originally anticipated.
“Hopefully by next week our preliminary work will be done in Oregon so we can concentrate our efforts on Saskatchewan,” Mader said.
The company has also been forced to overcome a number of hurdles with respect to its European financiers.
“Those have been pretty well put to bed.”
He said he is just as disappointed as Rosthern residents about the delays that have plagued the project, but added they will be surprised by the activity level once he turns his attention back to Rosthern.
“It will be very fast-track.”
Knoll said International Debranning hasn’t built much goodwill in the community to date. A couple of contractors who worked on site preparation say they haven’t been paid for their efforts and one of them has filed a lien against the company’s property.
He believes local barley farmers who had contracted with the company have sold off most of their inventory at today’s high prices, so if the plant goes ahead it will be a while before there is adequate grain supply for the operation.
An official from Farm Corp United Grain Pool Ltd., the firm with exclusive rights to deliver the 800,000 tonnes of grain that the Rosthern plant would require annually, was unavailable for comment.
Knoll said residents have taken a cautious wait-and-see approach to the venture since Day 1 because many lost money in a failed ethanol-feedlot project a few years ago and they haven’t forgotten that lesson. They see some similarities with how the current proposal is unfolding, he added.
“We aren’t out any money at all. We just got our hopes up,” he said.
