By Karen E. Thuermer, AJOT These days everyone is thinking green, and for seaports that handle “green” products such as wood pellets, this is good news. With more countries adopting green carbon neutral policies, the demand of biomass products is on the increase. That’s because the use of biomass products, such as wood pellets, reduces the emissions of harmful climate gases from fossil fuels, thereby reducing the global warming effect. Green Circle Bio Energy Inc. of Cottondale, FL, is such a producer of biomass based renewable energy. In fact, the company located its manufacturing facility in Cottondale in the northwest panhandle of Florida because the region is capable of growing vast Southern Pine forests plus the site offered a rail head connection to Port Panama City USA. Green Circle is well founded since it is part of the JCE Group, a diverse company based in Gothenburg, Sweden, that is involved in a number of businesses: offshore oil & gas service, construction and real estate, information technology, telecom and logistics, forestry and sawmill, bio energy, hardware distribution and manufacturing, and financial investments. In fact, 90 percent of the JCE Group’s operations are located outside Sweden in countries including Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. As the renewable energy sector is in its formative years of becoming a large scale industry, Green Circle has been established with the purpose of becoming a major player in the international market for alternative, carbon neutral energy. Key to Green Circle’s success is its wood pellets are made from pine wood grown in sustainable plantation style forests in the Southeastern United States, the largest Southern Pine forest in the world. The amount of renewable energy produced from the pellets is 11 times higher than the amount of fossil fuels used in the growth of the feed stock, the production of the wood pellets, and the transportation of feedstock to the plant and of wood pellets to the international market. Green Circle’s wood pellet plant in northwest Florida is the largest of its kind in the world with an annual capacity of 560,000 tons a year, although Olaf Roed, President of Green Circle, reports the company is operating currently at 500,000 tons per year. Located on 225 acres in North Florida’s wood basket, the facility has an advantage in that it has a direct Bay Line Railroad north/south rail link to the deep water seaport of Port Panama City USA 58 miles away on the U.S. Gulf Coast. “This is the closest port to our manufacturing facility,” Roed says. The facility is also adjacent to U.S. Highway 231, which also runs north and south, and Interstate 10, which runs east and west. It is also close to CSX railroad. Although companies usually do not transport product via rail for journeys under 500 miles, Green Circle’s pellets are transported in bulk, thereby making the short journey to Port Panama City USA cost effective. Again, the rail head plus the fact wood pellets are easy to handle in bulk transportation are key. At the seaport, the wood pellets are warehoused in a facility that the port built several years ago to help attract and retain the company. The warehouse is necessary to stockpile the wood pellets and keep them dry until they are shipped out to overseas markets. As Roed reveals, all of the pellets are shipped to Europe. A key port of entry for the shipments is Rotterdam. Wayne Stubbs, executive director of Port Panama City USA, revealed during a tour of the seaport last year that it was initially believed Green Circle might consider using port facilities at the Port of Mobile, A, rather than Port Panama City USA. But he later added that Green Circle built a plant based on exporting the total production from that plant out of the Port Panama City USA. The port was ready for them. “We built a dedicated facility a few years ago for them and invested about $13 million for spe