Friends, I had a couple of notes from Terry Walmsley at Fibrowatt over the weekend, so thought we might start the week with these. They were posted as comments to previous posts, I'm just pulling them out to stand on their own here.
Today, a clarification on transportation jobs, and the Minnesota project's timeline:
Jim,
Hope you don't mind on the clarifications but a few points to add.I don't agree with you on the transportation jobs. While these may be taken by existing truckers, this is new work (i.e. new jobs) because litter generally is moved from barn to field by the grower or the local farmer. Haulers for Fibrowatt are new opportunities that did not previously exist as we will source our litter from a larger geographic area than from local barn-to-farm.
In Benson Minnesota the new hauling business was so important that a large regional transportation company that serves the plant actually moved their operation from down-state Minnesota to Benson. This new $million+ facility serves as the hub for 75 trucking jobs. This facility also has increased the local labor force as it includes their operations and maintenance facilities. Importantly, only a portion of these trucking jobs are related to the Fibrominn agreement. As a result of the Benson plant, this new employment center brought many more jobs to the area than just the Fibrominn related jobs.
Also, it is probably not appropriate to use the Minnesota plant as the expected timeline for future projects. Since this was the first US project, it required far more time to permit, finance, and complete construction of the project.
Terry Walmsley
Fibrowatt LLC
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