A new Georgetown County manufacturer is preparing to ship out the first cargo load of its products this weekend. The product is a biofuel that will be used to generate electricity in Europe.
The company is Carolina-Pacific and what they make is wood briquettes, an environmentally friendly substitute for coal. What it means is an economic shot in the arm for Georgetown and its port.
The company's manufacturing facility takes up a huge warehouse at the Port of Georgetown, where they compress sawdust into cylinder-shaped briquettes. The wood is southern yellow pine, harvested in the Georgetown area, though the briquettes could also be made out of switchgrass.
This first shipment of 5,000 tons of briquettes is headed to Scandinavia on the Liamare, a bulk cargo vessel based in the Netherlands. Carolina-Pacific employs 15 to 20 people of its own and created another 15 or so jobs for loading this shipment.
The company has big plans to expand in Florence and Williamsburg counties. "So whether it's through forestry or agriculture, we can generate quite a few jobs for this economy, for those in the harvesting process, trucking and transportation, intensification process, and then the port and delivery," said John Kern, CEO, Carolina-Pacific.
Kern says the company could do even more, if the port was dredged to allow ships that could haul 20,000 tons. The company has a twenty year contract with the port and a commitment to ship 60,000 tons each year.
Kern says he'd like to see his product stay closer to home. Instead, it's headed to Europe, which is committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by using renewable resources.
The U.S. has not signed that agreement and still uses mostly coal to generate power.
The company's first shipment is headed to Stockholm, Sweden. It'll take two weeks to get there.
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