Energy storage, while still a relatively expensive endeavour, is crucial as production of renewable energy is intermittent—when the wind blows or the sun shines.

The cost of producing electricity from solar and wind energy has significantly decreased in recent decades, and because of this, according to U.S. Department of Energy projections, energy sourced from renewables will continue to show the highest rate of growth through 2050.

Researchers at NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) calculate that there is the potential to triple the nation’s current capacity for storing renewable energy by 2050, with several emerging technologies that could help make this happen—the first being batteries.

We all take batteries for granted, but there are many opportunities for improvement. High-capacity batteries with up to 10-hour discharge durations may be useful for extending the range of electric vehicles or storing solar energy throughout the day. New estimates indicate that by 2050, up to 100 gigawatts’ worth of these batteries will likely be built, resulting in the viability of renewable energy improving significantly.

Limited resources of lithium and cobalt—currently necessary for producing light, potent batteries—are one of the main challenges. By 2050, almost all of the world’s cobalt reserves and about 10 percent of the lithium reserves are predicted to be exhausted, while the Congo, where around 70 percent of the world’s cobalt is mined, has problematic labour practices.

To address these concerns, in addition to designing batteries using different materials, scientists are striving to create methods for recycling these lithium and cobalt batteries. Tesla intends to introduce cobalt-free batteries in the coming years, while other companies want to replace lithium with sodium, which has many of the same properties as lithium but is far more plentiful and could benefit technologies for storing renewable energy.

Increasing battery safety is another priority. Electrolytes, the liquid or gel substances that enable an electric charge to flow from the battery’s anode (negative terminal) to the cathode (positive terminal) are one area that could use improvement as they can be highly volatile and flammable, causing fires and explosions should they leak.

Batteries can also be more expensive than other renewable energy storage options.

Concentrated solar power plants employ mirrors to focus sunlight, which heats hundreds of tons of salt to the point of melting. In a similar way to how coal or nuclear power is utilized in conventional plants to heat steam and drive a generator, this molten salt is used to power an electric generator. Additionally, these heated materials can be stored and used to generate electricity on sunless days, which enables continuous use of concentrated solar electricity.

This concept can also apply to other forms of power generation: for instance, heating salt with electricity generated from wind energy for use on windless days.

Solar power concentration still has a high cost, however, needing to improve its efficiency to compete with other energy generation and storage technologies. Increasing the temperature at which salt is heated is one way to do this, allowing for more effective energy generation.

While concentrated solar power plants and batteries can be used to produce and store renewable energy for a limited time, utility companies need to store significant amounts of energy for long periods, which is where hydrogen and ammonia, two renewable fuels, come into play. When wind turbines and solar panels are producing more electricity than the utilities’ customers require, utilities could produce these fuels with excess energy and store them there.

When it comes to hydrogen, thermal, and distributed energy storage, all pose their own advantages and challenges.

Hydrogen energy storage requires the mass production of hydrogen. This can be achieved with electrolytic hydrogen production, where water is split into oxygen and hydrogen through electrolysis. However, the most common method is a high-temperature method known as steam reforming using a hydrocarbon fuel such as diesel or natural gas, and steam to release the available hydrogen.

Many industrial processes use hydrogen, including the production of glass, fertilizer, steel, and chemicals. Due to environmental laws and consumer preferences, however, all of these companies urgently need to cut their carbon footprints.

Hydrogen can be used to generate electricity, heat, or fuel an automobile by using renewable energy inputs, and electricity can be produced when necessary by using the hydrogen that’s been stored. It can also be applied to other energy-demanding fields including the gas grid, fuel for vehicles, and industrial processes.

However, hydrogen energy storage currently costs more than fossil fuels, and most of these hydrogen-storage methods are still in the early phases of research. Extremely little energy can be produced by fuel cells from hydrogen for powering business or residential buildings.

The market for hydrogen energy stored in liquid form is constrained because this process involves considerable capital expenditures through the high insulation costs necessary to prevent evaporation and ensure safety around this explosive substance. As a result, the time and money required to charge and discharge hydrogen in these systems as well as the associated process costs are substantial.

Thermal energy storage (TES) involves a storage medium heated or chilled to store thermal energy, which can then be used for power generation as well as heating and cooling. TES equipment is very helpful in industrial and construction activities, employing a variety of techniques to store usable thermal energy in insulated repositories. A TES system typically includes a tank storage medium, a built-in refrigerated system or compact cooler, as well as pipes, pumps, and controls.

Again, the cost is an issue. While the TES system can securely store enormous amounts of energy, and its normal self-loss is negligible (0.05 to 1 percent), the price of a solar energy storage system varies depending on its use, size, and heat insulation method.

Phase transition materials and thermochemical storage-based thermal storage methods are often more expensive than the storage capacity they provide.

A pre-packaged option for storing energy for later consumption is a distributed energy storage (DES) system. The DC-charged batteries and the bi-directional inverter are the two crucial components of the system with equipment contained within a sturdy chassis that’s suitable for shipping. Lithium-ion batteries and cutting-edge technology are used in distributed energy storage systems to quickly collect and release extra power, resulting in a variety of advantages for users.

The market for distributed energy storage was estimated at $11.70 billion globally in 2021, and by 2027, it’s anticipated to grow to $19.20 billion. By providing smart grids and related services, distributed energy storage is a crucial part of updating the entire energy system, and if used to boost reliance on renewable energy sources, there will be considerable climatic benefits.

However, electric cars powered by distributed energy storage have a significant environmental impact. Additionally, distributed energy storage systems have a high initial investment cost and significantly greater ongoing maintenance costs. The increasing cost of the essential minerals required to make the batteries, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict which has disrupted the supply chain, and COVID-19 lockdowns in some parts of China have all prevented the market from growing.

Ultracapacitors too offer a compelling argument as a vital technology for both environmental and financial reasons, especially in light of the growing focus on climate change and sustainability.

In recent years, the use of ultracapacitors, also known as supercapacitors, double-layer capacitors, or electrochemical capacitors, has grown significantly. Although they can be compared to a hybrid of a battery and a typical capacitor, they’re not the same thing.

The name “ultracapacitor” refers to a type of capacitor with a very high capacitance—the ability of a component or circuit to collect and store energy in the form of an electrical charge—in comparison to other types. Ultracapacitor cells feature a positive and negative electrode separated by an electrolyte, just like a battery, however, they don’t store energy chemically as batteries do; instead, they do so electrostatically.

While ultracapacitors don’t store as much energy as a battery of comparable size, they have one important advantage. They don’t need a chemical reaction to discharge their energy and no physical or chemical changes take place, so they can do so far more quickly. This also allows them to be recharged countless times with little to no deterioration—in excess of one million charge / discharge cycles—another fantastic advantage.

Supercapacitors are frequently utilized in applications that call for numerous quick charge / discharge cycles as opposed to long-term compact energy storage, like automotive booster packs and power banks.

Today, most of these forms of energy are produced through incredibly inefficient processes from natural gas or other non-renewable fossil fuels, so finding ways to make the procedure effective and affordable is the key to producing infinite, entirely renewable energy as a huge potential benefit.

While the energy sector is under increasing pressure to lower the cost of renewable energy sources while also boosting adoption rates, start-ups and scale-ups are creating a variety of solutions for both consumers and energy producers with technologies that lower the cost of solar and wind power, boost energy storage capacity, and boost battery efficiency.

Storage is ultimately an enabling technology. When used wisely and with the environment in mind, consumers can save money; reliability and resilience can be increased, energy sources integrated, and environmental effects lessened, yielding long-term benefits for years to come.

The post The Search for Smart and Sustainable<p class="company">The New Generation of Energy Storage</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Fair to say that this most vital sector of the world’s economy is presently in a ferment, with numerous big questions arising, and none yet fully answered.

So, in its 55^th year, the Global Energy Show Exhibition & Conference should be unmissable. It’s the forum for attendees to engage, network, and learn about sustainability strategies, new cleantech initiatives and decarbonization; attend lively and engaging roundtable discussions and presentations by industry experts and influencers; and meet others to share global energy challenges and solutions.

Discussing this year’s upcoming show, Nick Samain leaves no doubt about how enthusiastic he is. As Senior Vice President for the Calgary location of global exhibitions and publishing company dmg events, Samain says the name of the upcoming exhibition was changed from the Global Petroleum Show to the Global Energy Show in 2020 in light of energy sector changes and the need for cleaner technology and reduced emissions.

“All that put together has transformed the show floor of the global energy show, and it’s done so in some important and exciting ways,” he says.

Driving discussion
The Global Energy Show Exhibition & Conference is North America’s only comprehensive, integrated energy event. Of the promise of this year’s show, dmg events says, “As no single source of energy can meet the increased global energy demand, the Global Energy Show is where Canada demonstrates its vision and leadership by bringing the right people together to meet global challenges with real-world solutions.”

Enormously proud of the representation of oil and gas at the event, the organizers are also aware that large petroleum-based producers with international operations are leaders in a changing industry, shifting their businesses and growth toward sustainable hydrocarbon production and lowering carbon emissions. In Canada, for example, the six largest oil-sands producers created Pathways Alliance (pathwaysalliance.ca), committing themselves to both supplying global energy needs and achieving Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

And it’s no coincidence that the Show is being held at Calgary’s BMO Centre at Stampede Park. Renowned for its oil and gas production, Alberta is also home to the 3,300-acre Travers Solar Project—the largest in Canada—and is seeing considerable investment in renewables.

“Overall, it speaks to the theme of the Global Energy Show,” says Samain, adding that the need to meet energy demands is no longer a “this” or “that” discussion about petroleum versus renewables. “I think we need to recognize that no single source of energy can meet the world’s demands. The world has changed a bit. Does LNG displace coal in other parts of the region, and can we make it as clean as possible in Canada? Yes, we can,” he says.

“And those are the types of debates and discussions that happen at the Global Energy Show, because they need to happen, and they need to happen face-to-face, so this event has an opportunity to influence things like policy and investment.”

With great power…
In Canada, we are fortunate to have an abundance of energy and resources, but the same cannot be said for many others around the globe. The country has a responsibility to be a leader in responsible power production, and the Global Energy Show is the ideal B2B exhibition and conference.

Welcoming representatives from over 111 countries, the event (from June 13-15) is a place to have conversations about Canadian energy and our supply chain with an international audience, and gain—and give—new perspectives that may lead to positive changes.

“It’s three days of really supercharging that industry and that’s how we plan the show, with a day-after approach,” says Samain.

“A year out, we get our governing body members together and say, ‘it’s the day after, let’s put our minds there right now. What’s happened? What were the important discussions? What’s that feeling I‘m going to get, walking the Global Energy Show?’ It’s the next 20 years of energy, and the greatest general moonshot opportunity that we’ve got.”

The entire value chain
Billed as North America’s only exhibition featuring the entire value chain, the Global Energy Show is the largest B2B exhibition and conference of its kind. It’s a place where energy industry pros gather and talk about the global energy transition, the role of all energy resources, and the latest innovations and technologies.

This year, the exhibition show floor will host over 600 exhibitors spread over five exhibition halls and an outdoor zone. Along with the exhibition, the event features a strategic and technical conference, and special presentations like the Global Energy Show Awards, the Plug and Play Innovation Theatre, the Emissions Reduction Theatre, and much more.

Over 30,000 participants are expected to attend, along with 22,500 companies doing business. The 2023 strategic conference will discuss topics such as the vital role of oil and gas in a functioning economy, cleantech investments and renewable energy, and the potential of hydrogen to power our lives. And experts and industry leaders at The Global Energy Technical Conference will discuss the future of energy and technology.

The Top 3 Strategic Conference Panels, meanwhile, will discuss Balancing the International Scales: Do Unsettling Geopolitical Situations Threaten the Energy Transition?; Nuclear, The Myth, The Legend; and The Great Carbon Capture Debate—A Real Solution or Another Way to Extend the Use of Fossil Fuels?

Moderated by industry experts, Interactive Roundtable Discussions will focus on a range of specific technical topics, such as Clean Energy Ecosystems: Is it Possible to Achieve Net Zero by 2035?; New Transformative Tech to Decarbonize the Energy Sector; Scaling and Growing the Hydrogen Market: The Challenges versus the Opportunities; and Challenges and Opportunities for CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage] Commercialization.

All sessions will be recorded, and full conference delegates will have access to the library for six months.

“There are two conferences,” explains Samain, “but at that main strategic conference, you can expect premiers to be speaking, international Ministers that regularly speak on the stage; real experts and leaders in industry such as presidents and CEOs of different international companies, as well as leaders here in energy like Dan Balaban, CEO of Greengate. The mix of speakers is back to that matrix of energy, no single source. All roads lead back to electricity.”

Back to in-person
Headquartered in Dubai, UAE since 1989, dmg events is behind 84 events in 24 countries, with some events drawing over 150,000 attendees. When COVID hit in March 2020, dmg, like many large event organizers, thought it was temporary.

In-person, face-to-face events—the foundation of the company—kept being pushed to later dates until 2022, which became the first full year that dmg could again mount all the events in its calendar. 2023 is the second year that dmg is operating on its regular cycle, which is vital for the Global Energy Show, since it attracts domestic and international visitors.

“We need people because we are different from many conference producers,” says Samain. “All of our events always have a large exhibition attached to them, and exhibitors want to see people, busy aisles, and qualified attendance, especially conference delegates. We say, ‘An educated buyer is an empowered buyer.’ So they go to conferences, learn about a new technology, a new market, or investment opportunities, and go into the exhibitions which are really a marketplace for sectors, whether that’s broader energy or something specific like carbon capture or hydrogen, and do business.”

The location of the show, Calgary, represents a new chapter in Canada’s energy sector. Alberta is the heart of the country’s energy sector although it has faced some challenges over the past few years. There is, however, a momentum now in the industry, one creating many dynamic opportunities.

“It’s not quite ground-level, but it’s exploding out here in a great way,” says Samain. “And for anybody who’s in a supply chain, whether it’s manufacturing or allied resources, technology, AI, or anything else, the energy sector has all of that and more, and it touches so many important Canadian industries in the supply chain. I would say, come out and see what it’s all about. It will be worth your while because we are booming in a new era for Canadian energy.”

The post What’s on Show? Just the Entire Energy Value Chain<p class="company">dmg events and The Global Energy Show & Conference</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named for Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, Borea began in 2006 and has constructed nearly one-third of Canada’s renewable energy projects, leading the charge in this necessary transition.

Over 70 large-scale projects, comprising over 6800 MW of completely renewable energy, have been completed or are in process.

Borea’s staff boasts over 200 skilled and experienced professionals, with an estimated five hundred site employees across Canada. Thanks to its experience and ability in renewable energy, the company can focus its skills on bringing cost-effective, turnkey alternatives to move the nation’s entire energy grid forward.

Putting the ‘new’ in renewable
Despite the pandemic, Borea’s mission to “deliver renewable with care” is moving ahead without interruption. Borea is using new technologies to improve renewable energy as well.

A major recent example is the Suffield project in Alberta, completed in October 2020. The plant utilizes both bifacial panels and solar tracking technology, generating more power in a smaller space compare to a monofacial panel and fixed tilt racking system.

The union of these two technologies heralds a bold new development in solar energy and may prove instrumental in future plant design.

Suffield’s location in Canada’s Energy Project is no coincidence. Although Canada’s Western provinces are facing a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, they have a far greater resource available; thanks to the flat terrain, they boast the sunniest weather in Canada.

Alberta alone enjoys an average of 1,900 hours of sunshine in the north and 2,300 hours in the south, making it the nation’s sunniest province—and a natural hotbed of solar development.

The Suffield project, boasting 90,000 solar panels organized into ten blocks, will help Canada move down the road toward its renewable energy future and it demonstrates bold new technologies as well.

As their name implies, bifacial solar panels display photovoltaic cells on both sides, substantially increasing their output capacity. But more practically, the bifacial panels mitigate the blockage caused by accumulations of snow. This technology significantly improves the reliability of the solar farm during the frigid winter.

Making light of snow
With many types of solar panels, snow accumulation can at the very least necessitate tedious cleaning, and potentially take whole power plants out of commission. But with bifacial technology, power can still be generated on the panels’ reverse side from sunlight, even from the light reflected off fallen snow.

This advantage provides enough power and heat through the power generation process to melt the snow and hold power generation steady.

Project Engineer Moran Wang explains that as our planet faces the extreme weather that will result from climate change, it will be more essential than ever to maintain a resilient power grid during these events—and bifacial technology can help provide that.

But the bifacial panels are only one half of the Suffield project’s new advantages. Panel tracker technology, which adjusts the panels so that they remain permanently perpendicular to the sun on a single axial, helps the panels maintain constant optimal power production. The result is that their output is far superior to static panels, which in comparison enjoy full sunlight only for a limited time each day.

The second function of the solar tracker is to facilitate the snow removal process. Wang explains that, “If we detect snowfall, the panel will be triggered into a ‘snow-dumping’ mode. That makes it more reliable, in the sense of facing a more extreme environment.”

Tracking technology and bifacial panels could produce as much as 30 percent more energy than traditional panels. This helps achieve more power production in a similar footprint than monofacial with fixed tilt racking.

Or as Wang prefers it, “To achieve the same amount of energy, you have a smaller footprint.”

Bird’s eye view
As project engineer on the Suffield project, Wang also oversaw development of the plant’s weather station, Suffield’s eyes and ears, plus another innovation: an aerial drone outfitted with infrared cameras.

“It’s a huge asset,” says Wang, who pilots the drone himself. The bird’s eye view can highlight panel problems instantly, saving time and money during diagnostic procedures.

“We used to spend a huge amount of money to call in actual aircraft with human pilots and human camera operators to do this kind of service,” Wang recalls. “Now, we can use a tiny little drone operated by someone on-site.”

With the success of the Suffield project, Wang says he believes the next step in renewable energy is increasing energy storage capacity and reliability; keeping the power flowing so energy grids don’t need to fall back on fossil fuel backups.

“I think one missing piece of the puzzle is making it more reliable,” he says. “From there, we can only improve it.”

Advances in battery technology can ensure wind power and solar continue supplying grids even during night hours or inclement weather, bringing renewable energy more in line with Canada’s ever-increasing energy requirements.

But while the Suffield project highlights Borea’s embrace of new ideas, it is but one of the company’s recent projects.

In Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km south of Herbert and approximately 40 km east of Swift Current, the Blue Hill Wind Energy Project is a 175 MW facility comprising 35 wind turbines with a capacity of 5 MW each. This project called for careful planning, as environmental constraints and hot afternoon temperatures presented some unique challenges, which Borea rose to meet.

Carbon-neutral coming
As Borea continues to advance these renewable energy projects as well as the relevant technology involved, the company is still committed to building a carbon-neutral energy grid in Canada.

“I do think renewable energy is the way of the future,” Wang says. He adds that although wind and solar power are hardly cutting-edge ideas, it is only recently that they have become really practical.

He agrees that with the additions of bifacial panels and tracker technology production and implementation costs may increase, but he argues solar technology is still very much an industry in its infancy.

“With everything in human history, we have to let it grow,” he says. “I’m proud to be at the forefront of this.”

The post Innovation in Alberta: Bringing New Technologies to Solar Power<p class="company">Borea Construction</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

In recent years, the decline of the pulp and paper industry has had a devastating effect on the forestry economy across Canada, but particularly in Québec. The provincial government is actively seeking innovative alternatives, and wood pellet production has become a key consideration for the future of the forestry sector.

Wood pellets are an organic biofuel and are made by compressing sawdust into small granular pieces that can be burned in a furnace to generate heat, and this can also be converted into green energy to generate green electrical power. This process emits fewer pollutants when compared to other forms of combustion heating, and wood is preferable to many conventional, non-renewable resources as trees can be regrown. La Granaudière is a perfect test case.

The village of Saint Michel des Saints is located on the southern edge of an immense forest, and it has a long history in forestry, lumber, and wood processing. In 1989, a wood processing company came to Saint Michel des Saints looking for a place to build a new facility, and the region became home to an oriented strand board (OSB) mill that employed just over two hundred local residents and produced roughly 500 million square feet of OSB annually.

The community has a workforce with a great deal of expertise in these fields, but in recent years, the decline of the pulp and paper industry has created instability in the local economy. Rising wood and fuel costs, combined with a steep decline in the price of OSB put the company in a poor enough position that it was forced to shut the facility down at the end of 2007, and an adjacent sawmill owned by the same company was sold off.

A mix of hardwood and softwood is harvested from Québec forests every year, and traditionally, the hardwood would be sold primarily to customers in the pulp and paper industry. As that industry continues to decline, the Québec forest ministry is left uncertain about what to do with the extra hardwood stock. To protect the sustainability of forestry operations, the policy of the ministry is to only provide permits to wood harvesting companies if there is a designated application for the entire harvested crop of trees.

As a result, large portions of the hardwood forests that would have previously been collected are now over-mature and beginning to degrade. La Granaudière will help to solve this problem by creating a new application for that crop. “They call that the frozen forest because there are no permits for how to use that wood, so we are going to defrost those over-mature areas. Then we will be participating in the sustainability of the forest by reducing emissions of GHG (greenhouse gases). To a certain extent, we are the test case for the government of Québec,” said La Granaudière Project President and Chief Executive Officer Yves A. Crits.

This project will also help to improve sustainability by providing an application for branch waste. Traditionally, tree harvesting resulted in branches being left behind on the forest floor. As they decompose, a great amount of carbon is released into the surrounding environment. La Granaudière has plans to harvest those branches so that they can be processed into wood chips. “By reusing forest chips, we are going to provide a use for low-value wood, reducing even further the impact of GHG emissions and improving further the sustainability of the forest,” said Yves.

More than a decade after the Louisiana Pacific OSB plant closed down putting more than two hundred people out of work, La Granaudière has demonstrated a plan to revitalize the local economy and community. It will be bringing approximately fifty new jobs to the area within the production plant itself and 180 total jobs including forestry operation and logistics.

La Granaudière is located on a four-hundred-acre plot of industrial land that is 1.5 kilometres from the nearest home and four kilometres from the local sawmill, with direct access to logging roads. This means that the facility will not only have a highly-skilled workforce, but it will be connected to incoming transport forest routes for renewable, competitively-priced feedstock both as raw logs from the forest and residue from the local sawmills.

As well as the proximity to logging roads for incoming raw material, Saint Michel des Saints is also an ideal location for outbound transport. The facility is located near a deep-water port on the St. Lawrence River with a shipping route connecting it to the European market. A dedicated fleet of trucks will run continuously transporting pellets between the plant and the port.

In Québec, the independent chief forester is in charge of determining the maximum sustainable volume of wood that can be perpetually harvested, and the forest ministry is then in charge of portioning that harvest to companies under supply guarantees. The ministry has granted La Granaudière a right to cut hardwood for approximately 75 percent of its needs. This agreement enables the developers to offer supply chain and competitive price security to its customers by also mitigating take-or-pay risk.

After five years of in-house development, the project began at the end of August 2019. All of the engineering, procurement, and construction contracts were already signed and activated immediately at financial close. Three contractors: Québec City-based Shuot Inc., Player Design Inc. of Maine, and Law Marrot Milpro from Sainte Hyacinthe, Québec were all hired to work on various aspects of the project and broke ground last September. Due to the thorough preparatory planning, work is now moving swiftly, and the facility is expected to be at starting capacity by September of this year and at full production by 2022.

One of the most significant difficulties facing the La Granaudière project is finding sufficient manpower. Currently, Québec’s unemployment rate is below five percent, which is the lowest it has ever been since the statistics were first compiled in 1976 and lower than any other province, and this has made finding qualified labour a challenge for the company.

The project developers have devised an innovative solution to this problem. “We are going to bring back the people who had to leave to find work outside the village when the Louisiana Pacific plant closed down in 2007. We are going to increase the quality of life for those people by having them come back home to where they were living before,” says Yves.

The La Granaudière facility will have the ability to process a range of raw materials on-site into four grades of wood pellet products. It will de-bark raw logs, chip branches, and compress residues from sawmills. For home heating, it will offer a premium quality pellet that generates very little ash. For district heating, it will offer a secondary, low-to-moderate ash grade product. Finally, for industrial power generation, it will offer two grades of moderate and high-ash pellets. All of these products will receive comprehensive screening to ensure that they meet the quality standards demanded by customers and work toward achieving Sustainable Biomass Program and ENPlus certifications.

As the declining pulp and paper industry brings ongoing economic uncertainty to many regions in Québec, the La Granaudière project is on track to give new life to the forestry sector. “There are two major activities in the village of Saint Michel des Saints: tourism and forestry. We are going to revive the village by recovering the prosperity of the area,” Yves stated confidently.

The post Revitalizing a Community With Renewable Energy<p class="company">La Granaudière</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Agriculture and agri-food are vital contributors to the country’s economy, employing an estimated 2.1 million people, and generating Can $134.9 billion, approximately 6.8 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

To achieve this, many of the country’s 189,874 farms, whether small or large, use chemical fertilizers to enrich their soil, provide plant nutrition, and increase crop yields. Used for decades, some chemical fertilizers contain potassium, ammonium phosphate, and nitrogen, used in the formation of protein.

So the Government of Canada’s announcement that it was targeting a 30 percent reduction in nitrous oxide emissions from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by 2030 to reduce greenhouse gases met a fiery reaction from farmers and associations like the Alberta Wheat Commission.

Calling for greater clarity, the Commission said the 2030 target “has fueled confusion and frustration due to a lack of clarity on what will be measured and how,” adding that farmers were not consulted over the proposed nitrogen reduction, which is aimed at “what seems to be an arbitrary and unachievable target.”

Some, like Joshua Day Chief, CEO at AdvancedAg, and son of the founder, Dr. Phyllis Day Chief, believe farmers suspected that limiting nitrogen in fertilizers was inevitable, but there was uncertainty over when it would happen.

“I felt a lot of farmers knew something like this was coming,” says Day Chief. “And whether or not they thought it was going to be federally mandated—even for their own farms—they knew what they were doing for years wasn’t sustainable. It just wasn’t.”

The future of farming
Described as “A family-owned Canadian business to the core,” AdvancedAg was created in 2016, yet the roots of the company go much deeper than that. Beginning long before the company—and its unique focus on using innovative, cutting-edge biology to improve soil and water health—even existed, founder Dr. Phyllis Day Chief worked at Alberta’s Lethbridge College as a technical writing instructor for almost 35 years.

Working with other entrepreneurs across North America, Phyllis saw a new technology being developed out of Cleveland, Ohio, for cleaning wastewater and ponds. Approaching the supplier, she asked if anyone in Canada was working with the product. The supplier replied by asking her why would anyone want to treat bodies of water that are frozen half the year.

Through her college connections, Phyllis met Cal Koskowich, Industrial Technology Advisor at National Research Council Canada, and formed a partnership with Lethbridge College’s Aquaculture Centre of Excellence.

“During the early stages of our business, we partnered with them, and the research we were doing turned out to be quite important,” says Day Chief. Now 36, Joshua remembers helping at AdvancedAg as a kid, moving boxes and getting a feel for the Indigenous-owned business and its research. Later, attending Lethbridge College and graduating from the Environmental Assessment and Restoration program, he briefly worked in the reclamation industry before entering the family’s business full-time in 2014.

“It was mom and I, and we were focused on water treatment at the time, setting up presentations to talk to municipalities,” he says. “Our bacteria are capable of so many things depending on how we grow them, but we decided we wanted to focus on water remediation—large lake and storm pond remediation for municipalities—rather than spread ourselves too thin,” says Day Chief.

Growth throughout Canada
Making annual trips to Cleveland to meet with their head scientist and suppliers, AdvancedAg was shown a biotechnology that was being used on high-value crops such as pineapples, avocados, aloe vera, and bananas, centred mainly in developing countries where crops were treated with backpack sprayers.

However, the company also knew that the research it was conducting, and the bacteria it was culturing for large-scale operations, were relevant to Canadian crops and conditions. So, the next year, AdvancedAg applied the technology to a farm and saw positive results right away.

Partnering with several third-party consulting agencies and research centres to get replicated trial work done on the crop side of things soon saw data come back. “It was incredible how the bacteria were responding in the soil, producing larger plants and roots and increasing overall biomass, which was leading to healthier crops,” says Day Chief.

“So that’s really where it all started. Being here in Canada, in such a small, tight-knit community of agriculture—I’d say not just in the prairies, but across Canada coast-to-coast—you’re probably only a couple of people away from knowing everyone in the agriculture industry.”

Word about the company and its results spread quickly, and Day Chief was approached by farmers who said they wanted to focus on their soil health and soil biology—that they had hit a wall. Already using too many expensive chemical fertilizers and synthetic products, they were compelled to use more and more to get better crops.

Soon, circumstances prompted them to begin envisaging AdvancedAg as a leader in improving soil and water through 100 percent natural, organic-certified products, supported by decades of research and innovation. “Since 2016, we now have about 50 locations brewing our bacteria across the country,” Day Chief says, “and we have a couple in the U.S. as well. It’s really taken off for us.”

In 2020, AdvancedAg won the Environmental Stewardship Award, as well as the Technology and Innovation Award in 2022 at the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Awards. The company is now being considered by the Alberta Chamber of Commerce for the Indigenous Business of Distinction Award.

Natural by nature
The team at AdvancedAg sees a day soon when its all-natural bacteria products are widely available—ideal for both small and large farming operations, parks and recreation, golf courses, water treatment, and home and garden. AdvancedAg has recently launched a retail division for customers outside of large-scale agriculture called A*LIVE Bio. The company is now in many SiteOne Landscape Supply locations, helping customers create more vibrant and healthier lawns, gardens and flowers.

“It’s not just farmers that need a better way to grow things,” says Day Chief. “Other people want that too, to put something on their lawn or garden that’s safe enough to have your kids or dogs run right through it after applying. With a lot of chemical fertilizers, they can’t do that. We’re seeing huge growth on the retail side as well.” (As an aside for home gardeners, Day Chief notes that the product also works well to repair dog urine burns on grass.)

At present, the company’s line of eco-friendly “A*LIVE” bioproducts are available at 15 SiteOne locations in Western Canada and should soon be in other stores across the country.

“A consortium of function-focused microbes”
The bacteria in AdvancedAg’s ACF-SR “perform key functions in the soil, including fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere, solubilizing essential nutrients, such as phosphorus and potassium, and producing phytohormones, which provide the full spectrum of plant growth promoting (PGP) functions in the soil,” according to the company.

“Yet it isn’t a fertilizer that you apply to your lawn and it’s lush in a day or two,” emphasizes Day Chief. “It can sometimes take a couple weeks. We’re fixing the soil for improved root development so plants can grow healthier for longer, using sustainable practices and technology.” He also says the company is moving away from the word “bacteria,” using “microbes” instead, since bacteria seem to have a negative connotation for some.

“What we’re using is a consortium of function-focused microbes,” says Day Chief. “Each species of microbes we use has one or many functions for plant growth. And when we use similar ones for water treatment, each one of those species has a function for nutrient cycling, like breaking down solids, or outcompeting algae for food,” he explains.

“It’s just incredible how we are able to train these bugs. We put them through a series of tests so we know what they’re going to do when we apply them, and that’s also something that separates us from many other biological products.”

Saving money and nurturing growth
Along with being better for the environment and free from chemicals, AdvancedAg’s products are considerably cheaper than fertilizer, resulting in cost-savings for farmers and other customers.

“Even if we are able to achieve the same yields as farmers had before, but they’re cutting back 20 percent of their fertilizer, that’s money in their pocket,” he says. “We also know the quality of the crops is much higher, and long-term, it’s also an investment in their soil, so their kids can take over the farm in a better spot than where their parents and grandparents left it.”

Through AdvancedAg’s products, farmers are saving money and nurturing future growth by building root development and increasing available nutrients in the soil, seeing better results year after year.

“The farmers who have used ACF for multiple years are seeing better results than the first year,” says Day Chief. “We’re really changing things in the soil, so it’s more of a regenerative approach, compared to historically, where farmers were putting down so many pounds of fertilizer and hoping for big yields that year.”

Along with improving overall soil conditions for farmers, AdvancedAg’s products are being used by municipalities to improve the condition of water in storm retention ponds, which are used to collect nutrients and waste. “You have green spaces, parks, baseball fields, people’s lawns. We know that only roughly 40 percent of all nitrogen applied to any type of crop is used by the plant; 60 percent of that runs off into our water, and about 50 percent of phosphorus is used by the plant, so these fertilizers aren’t very efficient,” Day Chief explains.

“We know that by using bacteria and utilizing what’s already in the soil and atmosphere—as opposed to putting something on—plants are going to use nutrients efficiently and we’re going to have zero harmful runoff at all,” he says.

AdvancedAg isn’t out to replace synthetic products such as fertilizer—which is extremely important, although it has had bad press in the mainstream media. The issue, says Day Chief, is that producers have become over-reliant on synthetic chemicals because there has been a lack of options to meet yield requirements.

“We are just hoping to create more of a balance, and we know we can cut back [on fertilizer] and put something else in place where we’re going to get a better long-term result,” he says. “It’s a balance. I think agriculture, and the way we’ve been fertilizing and using chemicals, has been way off balance over the last 50 years.”

The post Doers, Dreamers, and Visionaries<p class="company">AdvancedAg</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named after founder August Claas in 1913, the company has expanded its reach globally to more than 160 countries across five continents. But while the group’s harvesters first reached North America in the 1950s, the CLAAS of America sales unit was formally organized in 1979. Today, there are two operational units in the U.S.; CLAAS Of America Inc. handles sales, while CLAAS Omaha Inc. manages the production of combines for the North American market.

We spoke with CLAAS of America President and General Manager, Eric Raby, in March 2018. More than three years later, it is a very different world but still one that requires agribusiness. Raby and CLAAS Omaha’s new President, Matthias Ristow, laid out the company’s groundwork moving forward. Ristow, who has more than seven years of experience with CLAAS, has recently taken over responsibility at CLAAS Omaha and is supervising the company’s production of new cutting-edge line of combine harvesters.

Now in their second year of production, the company’s LEXION 8000-7000 Series harvesters boast the highest capacity in their class combined with unprecedented fuel efficiency. The machines harvest an average of 20.3 acres per hour, which the company calculates to as much as 31 percent higher than other harvesters. This is largely due to its patented APS SYNFLOW HYBRID threshing and separation system. Pre-separating up to thirty percent of the grain before it even reaches the threshing units and twin separation rotors, the unique system provides higher output using less fuel while not damaging the crop itself. “This is a completely new range of combines, from top to bottom,” Raby remarks. “You never think that combines can any get more capacity or more efficient, but we find ways to do it.”

In addition to its harvesting efficiency, the LEXION DYNAMIC POWER system helps farmers reduce fuel costs by being up to thirty percent more fuel-efficient than competitors. This helps the machine harvest up to 7,240 bu/hr and unload more than five bushels per second. Finally, a DYNAMIC COOLING system and central lubrication system help keep the engine and all moving parts running smoothly, reducing maintenance and downtime.

The new LEXION is merely the newest addition to CLAAS’s extensive product line, which extends from combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors to mowers, tedders, rakes, and square and round balers. The new harvesters also sport the company’s seed-green color. Raby hopes this will reinforce the company brand beyond traditional marketing.

As Raby described, the company is in the midst of a transition that began before the pandemic. For the past five years, he estimates, CLAAS has been increasing its distribution network. The result, he says, is more cohesive; far from increasing complexity by adding more vendors and products, the practice actually helps simplify the distribution network—in defiance of traditional logic. “It’s really easy to make things complex,” he says. “It’s more difficult to make things simple.”

By diversifying the distributor network, the company offers a closer relationship with its dealers and end-users, superior to a simple transactional relationship. Raby says the results have been positive, with no signs of abating. “We’ve seen good growth in the past few years, and it looks like the current trajectory, especially with current trends in the market, will continue to propel us forward.”

This growth may well help CLAAS continue to diversify its product line. Raby points out that, while CLAAS of America’s product line is extensive, it does not yet supply equipment for planting, tillage or spraying—all vital components of the farming process. Yet he and the leadership team hope that, by expanding its distribution network, the company’s suppliers may be more amenable to this development.

“Over time, not only do they become more dependent on us, but we become dependent on them,” he says, developing a relationship that is more than a mere convenience of transaction. “We partner with dealers on the basis of promoting that business together,” he continues. “When we’re dependent on each other, it becomes a relationship that seems to be much more synergistic.”

This reflects CLAAS’s desire to develop close relationships not merely with suppliers but with end-user farmers as well. The company has a history of staying in touch with vendors and customers long after agricultural shows. On a smaller scale, the company goes directly to the source. In ‘customer clinics,’ company sales representatives and product specialists meet with dealers and customers to discuss harvesting practices and harvesting issues, and to collect performance feedback from customers.

As an essential business related to food production, CLAAS of America was largely unaffected by COVID shutdown measures; indeed, Raby relates that, though many employees worked remotely, the company more than rose to the challenge. “Despite the adversity that the pandemic brought, we were still able to deliver our best fiscal year ever.”

Yet, so much of CLAAS’s business model remains face-to-face. It is difficult to demonstrate a combine harvester virtually, after all, and the company is looking forward to resuming in-person farm shows throughout the country.

Thanks to successful pre-pandemic planning and CLAAS’s role in an essential industry, its goals remain steady and ambitious. “Our goal, over the next five years, was to double the size of our business in North America,” Raby recalls of the 2019 decision. “That’s a pretty tall order.” Yet bold new developments are keeping the company on schedule to achieve this.

It recently opened a trailblazing new tractor factory in Le Mans, France. The product of three years of development and €40 million in investment, this ‘Future Factory’ will utilize the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality throughout all stages of assembly. Additionally, new automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move tractors around the facility and are capable of moving up to twenty tons of material at a time. The result is unprecedented production totals. When fully up to speed, CLAAS predicts the factory will produce up to 13,000 tractors annually.

The company’s move into automated vehicles is further reflected in its new minority shareholding stake in Dutch start-up AgXeed, which is working to advance automated farm machinery. Raby describes this, like its customer relationship, as symbiotic. “This gives us an opportunity to start to leverage the technology that they have…with some of the tractor savvy that we have. So that’s very exciting.”

But closer to home may be where CLAAS’s most effective development is taking shape. The company’s new training academy, 20,000 square feet of space in Omaha that is the product of two years of development, heralds a bold new chapter in the company’s labor recruitment, workforce development and dealer training. The academy hosts the company’s new apprenticeship program, mirrored on the same system, which has built and maintained the German economy for centuries.

Apprentices work at CLAAS in a laboratory setting, learning the intricacies of agricultural machinery. The second half of the program, partnered with Omaha’s own Metropolitan Community College, provides further academic and practical training. After three years, apprentices take an exam administered by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. The program is globally respected and provides candidates with accreditation that opens doors to employment anywhere in the world. Ristow says that this particular apprenticeship program, while new to North America, will help provide a steady supply of skilled labor. “It’s pretty much the backbone of the German economy, a continuous supply of qualified employees,” he says.

This global reciprocity that makes the apprenticeship program powerful, as Ristow notes that CLAAS operates similar programs in Russia and Hungary as well. “Everyone who has that certificate is known to have a certain level of knowledge,” he says. Finally, while the program is designed to move employees into CLAAS’s production side, they can easily move to service as well. “They have the training; they have the know-how,” Ristow says, “and they should be of interest to our service team as well.”

With these developments and despite increases in steel and fuel prices, CLAAS’s team is confident about the future. The company earned the Equipment Dealers Association’s dealer choice award just before this writing, its third such award in four years, demonstrating its strong customer service prowess. Yet new product developments are on the horizon, and the company is already increasing its production capacity to accommodate them. Despite the cyclical nature of agriculture, CLAAS remains a constant. As it looks ahead to future decades of service, the company will always be outstanding in its field—in every sense of the phrase.

The post Farming For the Future: New Developments, Facilities and Labor Practices<p class="company">CLAAS of America</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Outgrowing its space, the company relocated to a 2,400-square-foot facility in 1997, followed by another move in 2002; an extension of 12,500 square feet in 2010; a 20,000-square-foot shop in 2013, with extra-wide shop doors, high ceilings, and overhead cranes; and finally, an additional 20,000 square feet added this year to boost assembly output of all the company’s product lines. At Schnell, the team takes promises seriously, and is able to handle any project that comes its way.

Opportunities to help
Big or small, every Schnell project is given the attention it deserves, with the company embracing the opportunity to help its clients get the quality and service they need.

“We’re a family type of business, so that’s the kind of service we provide,” says General Manager Brent Dueck. “We provide customer service based on relationships, so it’s about helping customers first and asking questions later. We have a lot of friendly, knowledgeable staff that come from many different backgrounds, whether hydraulics, electrical, structural, or design, so depending on the questions people bring forward, we have a lot of different resources to help our customers with,” he says.

While there is one dedicated customer service manager, any one of the company’s different departments brings the same level of assistance depending on what’s relevant.

“Obviously, without customer service we wouldn’t be here,” says Dueck. “We built our business up from good customer service. It started with my dad back in ’94. He was all about helping the customer first and making sure the job was done well and everything was fair so everybody was happy. That’s our motto. It has to make everybody happy, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to do it.”

That’s also the company’s approach when it comes to dealing with three dedicated product lines. Although roughly 50 to 60 percent of what Schnell does is sub-contract work for multiple different manufacturers that need more capacity, the company thrives on its niche market of products including transloaders, Sweep-All, and planter hitches, which Dueck refers to as the company’s long-time bread-and-butter.

“The planter hitch is something that was designed here and we ended up patenting it,” he says. “It’s turned out to be a very good product.”

Planting is one of the most crucial tasks farmers and agricultural businesses do, and to ensure the work is done effectively and efficiently, having the best available tools is vital. Schnell’s conversion planter hitch does away with expensive modifications to tractors or planters, making existing equipment more adaptable and powerful.

“It’s a niche market,” Dueck says. “All the products that we build for our product lines are niche markets in a sense. Our planter hitch is only for farmers that grow crops like corn or soybeans. They’re the only ones who actually have the equipment that our hitches are used on.”

While it may be niche, it’s a market that exists because other big companies simply can’t offer what Schnell is providing with its unique hitch. “It’s been a great market, and it’s the easiest-selling product we build. Either the farmer needs it or doesn’t. If he needs it, he’s calling us. We’re the only manufacturer of that product because it’s patented and exclusive to us.”

While this means there’s essentially no competition, Dueck says the product is priced fairly and built well, and Schnell follows up to ensure any issues are taken care of.

Taking the load
The company’s transloader conveyors are essential pieces of machinery that enable quick, effective loading and unloading for items shipped via several modes of transportation, and also act as a safe transition from one container to another, preventing spills and waste. The biggest products Schnell builds, transloaders have held steady for the company since 2014.

“It’s a market that isn’t just for the oil and gas industries, as frack sand was, which is what the transloader was originally designed for,” says Dueck. “We sell these now anywhere that they load or unload granular product from rail cars or into rail cars.”

This versatile product does have competition, but Dueck says Schnell’s product is top of the class in this product line, with more attention to detail, better performance, and higher-quality components within the machine.

“It’s a nice sealed machine that doesn’t seem to have a lot of dust issues,” he says. “We’re just trying to make things more user-friendly with our product. It has very high capacity on some of the machines that our competition struggles to compete with, so that’s been one of our selling points.”

Sweeping the turf
Finally, the company’s Sweep-All line runs within Schnell Industries, but is a somewhat separate entity with its own website, sales team, and assembly department.

An opportunity that arose about six years ago led to Schnell buying a small, struggling company, turning it around and making it profitable, resulting in a very high-end turf sweeper product able to collect grass clippings, leaves, acorns, pine needles, apples, trash, gravel, twigs, and aeration plugs, to name a few, plus clean and sweep, dethatch, and core aerate.

While there are some similar products on the market, none has quite the wide work range of Sweep-All, says Dueck.

“As a whole, it’s another niche market,” he adds. “Not every homeowner is going to buy one. They’re pricey, but there are also high-quality components on there.”

Sweep-Alls are hand-built and assembled at the company’s Winkler facility, ensuring quality from start to finish, and are probably the company’s fastest-growing product line, Dueck says.

Training as opportunity
Along with quality products, Schnell also offers some unique training programs to young welders looking to gain experience in a real-life setting.

Although many companies have struggled with labour shortages, Schnell’s “significant” growth over the past few years has made sourcing experienced welders a challenge. Tackling the issue, the company decided to find young guys out of school and train them. Potential candidates entered into an open-ended, no-commitment deal for two sessions of two hours, experiencing real-life welding at the Schnell facility.

“Usually after the first test we could tell if they were worth bringing back a second time or not,” Dueck says. “Think of it like doing cuts on a team: you pick the best out of the young guys and say, ‘come back for another two-hour session.’”

A Schnell welding supervisor worked alongside them, giving points and tips and tricks before then leaving them alone for half an hour to do their own thing.

“That’s our biggest thing with welding—getting people to relax. People perform way better when they’re relaxed and we try to provide a relaxed atmosphere so they can just settle down and do their thing.”

These sessions have provided roughly 25 to 30 percent success rates of those who “made the cut” and are now full-time employees. But even those not chosen walk away with some free and useful experience gained in a real-life scenario.

“This is the real world, this is the big welding shop,” Dueck says. “We put them in a safe corner away from all the commotion in the building, but it gives them the real vibes. Some guys can’t handle it, but for some guys it’s just natural.”

Once hired, the welders still have to prove themselves, but the hands-on training jump-starts their confidence and readiness to grow. “It’s one of the more challenging positions we hire for,” Dueck says. “There’s a lot of raw talent a person needs. It’s not just tightening a nut and bolt. There’s more to it than that.”

And it’s an important factor in Schnell’s overall success. The company needs roughly 60 to 70 percent more welding staff than assembly staff to build any one of its specific products.

Going bigger
Currently sitting at 50 employees, Schnell just came through a big transition phase from being a good small company to being on the large side of small companies, says Dueck, with more growth coming in the next three months, including a dozen or so new staff for some big contracts coming up.

“We’ve got our eyes on some goals,” he says. These include a dedicated shop that processes all its steel instead of relying on other companies’ laser and water jet-cut parts, machining, torch, and plasma work, and powder coating, all of which is currently outsourced.

“We’re very good at the welding, we’re very good at the assembly, the diagnostics, the hydraulics, and the electrical,” says Dueck. “We’re very good at designing a machine and assembling and welding it, but some of the processes to get it there we’re still working on. That’s what we want to bring in-house over the next little while.”

These goals will mean a larger building and more employees, he says, in part to handle ongoing product-line growth, particularly for Sweep-All, which has experienced 40 percent growth each year for the last three years.

“We’re very diverse in that way,” he says. “We’re not bulletproof, nobody is, but we’re very stable. So hopefully that growth can continue to happen and we can expand as needed.”

Doubling up
The company has already doubled the size of its building in the last year, creating one of the biggest challenges—and most stressful experiences—of Dueck’s career, with supply chain issues, work disruptions, and tight deadlines, but the building was completed virtually on time.

“It was a month overdue, but I wasn’t going to complain,” he says. “I was terrified I was going to be six months overdue which would have really hurt us. Working with our contractor to find solutions and work through all of the funny issues was a challenge and an accomplishment that we managed to somehow pull out of the hat.”

Along with an ability to get things done, what else sets Schnell Industries apart from similar companies?

“I’m trying to think, are there similar companies out there?” says Dueck. “We do such a wide variety of products and builds. Yes, some companies do that, but we also actually still do a lot of custom work.”

That custom work could mean a literal walk-in order, he says, with a customer driving up and ordering a variety of lengths of steel. “We do that; we’re very diverse that way. There are two other companies in this town that do that, but I’ve got a lot of family throughout the U.S. and Canada and they say there just aren’t places that do big-time production and still take care of the small farmer. That’s us.”

Taking care of the small as well as the big needs is a point of pride for Schnell. “If you stop in tomorrow and say you need certain mesh or something for a little fire pit project in your backyard, we help you out with that.”

Saying yes
Providing that home family feeling is a big part of what makes Schnell the success it is, particularly when it comes to relationships.

“It’s just the ability to say, ‘sure, we can do that.’ We’ve tackled projects probably about three times bigger than our plant size here. We’ve done some stuff that’s been a little bit over-the-top, very big, crazy stressful,” he laughs. “Big-time equipment and at the same time, we’re building these little sweeps. People ask, ‘wow, how do you even make that work, make the big stuff and the little stuff?’ but it’s [thanks to] an attitude of, ‘don’t say no.’ If we feel we can do it, we’ll do it.”

That includes having an open mind, approaching everything with a different perspective and not sticking to just one product, he adds. “Variety is our thing.”

The post Agriculture Gets Unique Solutions: And Everyone Gets a Yes<p class="company">Schnell Industries, Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

“Our sustainability program is based on three pillars: environment, social, and governance,” says New Age’s COO Josh Urlacher. Last year saw the release of the company’s second annual Sustainability Report, where the company highlights its many impressive initiatives.

Through special designated collection bins, New Age has diverted thousands of aerosol cans from landfill, these being sent instead to a facility that can properly recycle them. In the past few years, about a ton of wood pallets and spools have been repurposed, with local artisans transforming them into tables, chairs, and outdoor porch furniture. And instead of it taking up space, the company has recycled 148,000 pounds of steel.

“These are mostly downhole items that could end up in landfill, or sitting in customer lay-down yards onsite, rusting away,” says Urlacher. Believing even modest changes make a big difference, the company’s switch to hand dryers in its facility has brought a 25 percent reduction in paper towel use. And by using half a dozen digital apps and making fewer colour copies, the company has saved thousands of sheets of paper.

Ethics and safety
Making positive changes benefits not only New Age but its many customers. Focused on the economy and business ethics of the industry—including recycling and reuse—the company introduced a successful clamp refurbishment program in its shop. “We sell our customers new clamps,” says Urlacher, “but we also push the reuse of these products.”

Working with two of the world’s biggest clamp / protector manufacturers, New Age maintains a large inventory of new and refurbished clamps, along with tubing, instrumentation, and cables.

“Customer clamp refurbishment increased over seven percent from the previous year,” says the company in its Sustainability Report. “The more we refurb, the less impact on the environment for New Age and our customers, a partnership in reducing the impacts of mining for raw materials. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is not just a catchy tagline, it’s an action!” Through specialized testing and in-house engineering, New Age proves to customers they can reuse clamps a set number of times based on scientific data gained from their clamp testing equipment.

“We all see that the direction the industry is heading,” says Urlacher. “COVID kind of put oil and gas in focus again. All eyes are on the industry, and it’s time to take a look at our practices and try to create awareness among employees about what we’re doing, and what we can do better, to be a sustainable part of society. So we include our staff,” he says. “The report is created by a few people, and we have regular meetings throughout the year where we pull staff from all divisions to get involved, and provide ideas and suggestions.”

Safety, like sustainability, is integral to New Age’s beliefs and practices. With full-time safety staff, the company prides itself on a top-tier safety program comparable to much larger oilfield service businesses.

“At New Age Oilfield, we believe that safety is an integral part of the company’s operations,” says President Mark Rhodenizer. To date, the New Age has an impressive Certificate of Recognition (COR) Audit score of 97 percent, and well over 2000 days since its last lost-time accident.

With memberships in ISNetworld (ISN), Avetta, Partnerships in Injury Reduction, and other safety-related organizations, New Age practices the old saying, “Safety is everyone’s responsibility.”

This includes managers, supervisors, all employees, and others on job sites, and encompasses everything from identifying safety requirements to communicating and investigating hazardous conditions; providing competency training and taking part in safety training programs; wearing personal protective equipment (PPE); and much more.

“When you’re in the oil patch, safety is number one,” says Rhodenizer, “and we need to maintain a safety program that ensures our employees return home safe from every job, and above industry standard safety stats that make us attractive to our customers. Many of our customers use online safety monitoring platforms that are even managed outside the country. If our stats meet the approval of those monitoring companies, we are free to work for the oil companies, so in the interest of providing our employees a safe place to work and the workload to support steady growth, focus and attention on our safety program must be paramount.”

With an all-inclusive training and competency program, new employees benefit from multiple in-person and online training courses and orientation programs from oil companies. This ensures they get a good background in New Age’s safety requirements before even setting foot on a rig site. Even customers and new crews are provided training on installing clamps and the safe handling of ESP power cables that transmit power to the downhole ESP equipment.

Engineering in-house
Primarily focused on Alberta and Southeast Saskatchewan, New Age’s coverage area also includes Northern British Columbia and Southwest Manitoba.

To further meet client demand, the company created its own in-house engineering department in 2017 after hiring Peter Lang, New Age’s Vice President of Engineering. Previously, the company had third-partied its engineering support but realized it needed more as it grew, including equipment design, builds, and continuous improvement on servicing equipment. When Lang became available around 2016, they knew the timing was right.

“Having engineering capabilities allows us to be a one-stop shop in many cases with our clients,” says Rhodenizer. “It also allows our customers to discuss conceptual ideas with our team, knowing that from all angles New Age has them covered. The other big benefit is that our customers do not have to deal with multiple companies to get the same result, which we know can lead to more invested time, higher cost, and open up room for overlap or errors.”

Growing to a staff of 60 , New Age’s varied talent pool includes employees with experience in mechanical engineering, artificial lift (including ESPs and pump jacks), electrical, production testing, cementing, downhole oil tools, and other relevant areas.

Perks for new employees include hiring and referral bonuses, company-paid benefits, and an RSP program. The way the company treats its staff and customers has resulted in a solid retention rate and great reviews.

“Our reputation exists in this field because we’re focused on quality, providing quality trained employees and products, and having our equipment look 100 percent at all times,” says Rhodenizer. “Oil companies have hired our competitors, but when we show up on site, it’s a big difference for them.”

Space age
In 2020, New Age built its own 10,500-square-foot full Heavy and Light Duty Maintenance shop. This way, the company doesn’t waste time, money, and fuel delivering units to third party shops. “We also have our own wash bay in our main shop so our field employees can wash their units upon returning after their jobs are completed. By doing this, we also lower our risk because it’s less unnecessary travelling, with lower wait times and cost savings,” adds Rhodenizer.

“In 2017 we went from a 12,000-square-foot shop to a 26,000-square-foot shop and we house all our divisions in one location, which allows us for future growth, for future service offerings, and we’ve been focusing on efficiency because of it. It also increases our on-site reliability and reduces potential loss of jobs.”

Recently, New Age expanded into pump jack servicing and is working on transformer refurbishment. Until now, step-up transformers for ESP were often left in a field and forgotten after being used. To address this, the company is purchasing, refurbishing, testing, and supplying these warrantied refurbished units, making them look and function like new.

Patent success
Along with servicing and rebuilding pump jacks, New Age has also designed a locking sleeve for fittings downhole, and thermal applications to deal with heating, expansion, and contraction experienced on SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) wells.

“We were recognizing some failures that were occurring because of this, so we designed a locking sleeve apparatus that slides over the fitting and makes it impossible for the fitting to come loose,” says Rhodenizer. “That’s in the works of becoming patented. And we also have our encapsulated multi-point thermocouple strings, pressure rated wellhead systems. We manufacture and test these in Leduc, and install them on our winter observation well projects for all of our heavy oil customers, who utilize the temperature sensor arrays for reservoir monitoring. That way, our customers have multi-point temperature readings throughout their observation wells in a small and durable package.”

As the privately-owned company looks forward to turning 20 next year, the team is looking forward to what the future will bring.

“Our business is very diverse,” says Rhodenizer. “Based on requests over the years, we’ll continue to be diverse. Any time we’ve grown, it’s because a customer called us and said ‘Can you do this?’ and we would take it back to the table and discuss it and ‘Yes, actually, we can do that.’ And here we are.”

The post Smarter Thinking for a New Age<p class="company">New Age Oilfield Services</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

As a leading supplier for emergency response and standby protection for upstream and midstream oil and gas operations in Western Canada and the territories, Trojan Safety Services proudly embraces its role in supporting a variety of industries in the energy sector. At all levels, Trojan Safety strives to ensure that organizations meet health and safety compliance regulations and that above all, workers are always protected on job sites.

Guided by values
Trojan Safety was founded in 1994 in Fort St. John, BC by Al Kirschner, and grew from a single Mobile Decontamination Shower Unit to providing a full suite of industrial safety services. Today, with the day-to-day operations being run by one of Al’s two sons, Jeff, as General Manager, the company remains in the family and remains true to those values that have guided its success.

These values, says the company, are “non-negotiable,” and include: ‘Show you care,’ with a team that takes pride in going the extra mile; ‘Keep learning,’ by remaining curious and seeking innovative solutions; ‘Always on time,’ which emphasizes an approach of respect for your workplace, clients, and co-workers; ‘Dependable,’ being part of a team that can be counted on; and ‘It’s all about relationships,’ which speaks to the heart of the company’s commitment to the safety of its employees and the communities in which it works.

“It’s our family business, but it’s more than just our direct family,” Jeff Kirschner shares. “It’s the people who have been part of it with us. They’re part of the family; they’ve been here forever,” he says.

“Most of the people within our Fort St. John office are people who started working at the company around the same time I did; we all just grew together. We’re incredibly fortunate that in an industry where turnover is typically high, we have people who have been with us for as long as I have, coming up on 18 years.”

Key services
Today, the company’s offerings today include industrial firefighting, first aid & paramedic services, H2S (Hydrogen sulphide) safety services, blowout & well control, portable & standalone gas monitoring, mobile air quality monitoring (AQM), infrared gas detection, decontamination shower units, and a training division located at the head office in Fort St. John offering industry standard courses to the public.

One of Trojan Safety’s core service lines is provided by the H2S Safety Supervisor, whose primary responsibility is the safety of all personnel on site. Crew safety is supported during the threat of H2S gas by utilizing state-of-the-art equipment such as air trailers containing compressed breathing air, electronic gas monitoring, and personal gas monitoring equipment. Pack training and Man-down Drills are conducted on a regular basis to ensure that all crew members know the proper procedures and the roles they will play in the event of an emergency.

In addition, Trojan Safety has also been growing further into performing plant turnarounds. “We’ve been slowly growing our plant turnaround business and growing our expertise in it,” Kirschner says. “We’ve been extremely successful in that [area] through exceptional management of our safety personnel on site.”

Turnarounds are scheduled events that involve an industrial plant’s whole process unit—such as a refinery, petrochemical plant, power plant, pulp and paper mill, et cetera—being taken offline for an extended length of time for renovation and/or renewal. These events could involve inspection and testing, debottlenecking projects, revamps, and catalyst regeneration projects, along with shutdowns and outages. Turnarounds are expensive both in lost production while the process unit is offline and in terms of direct costs for the labour, tools, heavy equipment, and materials used to execute the project. They typically represent a significant portion of a plant’s yearly maintenance budget and can affect a company’s bottom line if mismanaged.

As such, “working with clients during preplanning to ensure the proper amount of personnel and equipment is available for each phase of the progress is essential to ensuring a successful operation,” says Kirschner.

Challenging perceptions
Along with its many successes, the company has also faced its share of challenges over the years, but has always done what’s necessary to remain productive and successful. Now, the team is focused on getting back to growth.

“We’ve faced the same challenges as the rest of the people in the industry for the last eight years,” Kirschner says. “It’s really just now that the industry is coming back online, but we continue to face challenges with governments that seem to be anti-oil and gas.

“Now let me be clear,” he says, “I believe that regardless of anything, as a species capable of doing so, we should be striving toward zero impact. That’s across all areas, whether air, water, or land. I believe we’ll get there, but we have to accept that just like trying to get a plant to grow, you can only water it so much, and after that, time does the rest.” To this end, while Kirschner is a supporter of Oil & Gas, he is also in support of all realistic energy projects including renewables.

Building a labour force for the future
Certainly, growth can be a challenge in an industry that is facing a growing spotlight on its practices, practices that are subject to a slew of misconceptions, says Kirschner.

“There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the oil and gas industry, which is really unfortunate, especially considering Canada has the very best practices in the world when it comes to Oil & Gas development. Everything from the way we extract to our human rights and environmental protection is the best of the best, and yet you see our own government creating policies that restrict our ability to extract these resources, and somehow support getting them from other nations. When you understand that Oil & Gas is necessary not just for Canada to survive and thrive, but for every nation in the world to do the same, you must realize that it’s not going anywhere any time soon,” he says.

The ongoing stigma surrounding oil and gas has also led to struggles finding labourers within the industry, he says, coupled with how schools haven’t made students aware of the potential for growth and employment in the industry, particularly for those living in large, urban areas.

“I think about these people living outside of oil and gas cities who probably have no idea about the industry,” Kirschner says. “They have this misconception of it. They don’t realize they could come out to an industry that’s not what they think, and change their lives for the better… They could come to a resource town and purchase a [home] for probably less than $300,000, while making over $100,000 per year in a career they can enjoy for the long term. How many young people in the city can claim a six-figure salary?”

He does recognize that it is a labour-intensive industry. “There’s certainly a sacrifice that people will make to be here, but it’s a sacrifice in order to better your life and get ahead and have an opportunity to do more.”

Reaching people with this message is his goal, he adds, in an effort to help them understand the potential possibilities and opportunities available in different areas of the country, particularly those looking for a change and younger people looking to enter a career they may never have considered before.

“You can come to the oil patch, make great money, and live a good life and get started from there,” as part of the Trojan Safety family,” says Kirschner. “If you do a good job and want to be out there and want to be part of the team, you create unlimited opportunities for yourself. Trojan is a company that provides opportunities for people, and people create their own destiny.”

The post Safety on Site<p class="company">Trojan Safety Services</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

“The single biggest change is that we’ve engaged our upstream strategy,” states President and CEO Steve Hightower, “and we’ve started Hightower EV Solutions, where we’re putting [electric vehicle] charging stations throughout the country.”

In the fuel industry lingo, ‘upstream’ gas or oil production refers to companies involved in the identification, extraction, and production of raw materials. It is a broad category that covers surveying, drilling, manufacturing, oil sands mining, and other activities. ‘Downstream’ refers to post-production fields such as retail and distribution.

HPC’s upstream work centers on crude oil and liquid natural gas. Core downstream services include bulk fuel deliveries for commercial vehicle fleets, supply chain and inventory management, and emergency fuel supply. The company provides bulk fuel that goes into new cars coming off assembly lines at Honda, Nissan, and General Motors plants and also has clients in the sports, retail, utilities, government, manufacturing, and education sectors.

Given the surging popularity of electric cars, its move into the electric vehicle (EV) market makes good business sense. Launched a year and a half ago, Hightower EV is the third company to operate under the HPC umbrella. The other two are Hi-Mark Construction Group, which works on water and wastewater facilities in the Midwest and Eastern U.S. and HP Energy, which tackles infrastructure projects that enhance energy efficiency. Hi-Mark and HP Energy are both thriving, along with their parent company, Steve reports.

Hightower EV can design, build, and install electric vehicle infrastructure. In partnership with various tech companies, the turnkey service provider has worked on roughly 12,000 EV charging units nationwide.

“In some cases, we’re providing charging as a service. We go in and make an investment, say, for a retailer. We would actually bring the [EV charging] units in, and we would own them. We would do a profit share with the retail service station or hotel if they didn’t want to do the initial investment due to lack of early traffic. We would take on the risk,” he says.

For all the attention on EVs, HPC has no intention of abandoning gas and diesel.

“We focus on our customers where they’re at. We are a strong liquid fuels organization. That’s our core. That’s what built us. We don’t shy away from it. We try to bring in clean fuels and biofuels that are more ecologically friendly. Electric is a new fuel for vehicles, and our customers have expanded into that area, so we expanded with them,” Steve explains.

Unlike fossil fuels, biofuels are derived from living plant material. Ethanol, made from corn, is a common biofuel in North America, while fuel made from sugarcane is ubiquitous in South America.

The company’s business-to-business (B2B) fleet card continues to be one of its most popular offerings in the gas and diesel space. Used to purchase services and/or products, the card is accepted at thousands of gas stations and truck stops across the U.S.

The popularity of the fleet card “is growing tremendously. We’ve got over 300,000 cards in the marketplace right now, all commercial B2B. It’s saving many of our customers lots of money, and it’s growing very rapidly,” he says.

Hightowers Petroleum Company remains vigilant to the threat posed by COVID. While not as deadly as it once was, the virus has not been eradicated. “We’ve maintained a pretty strict protocol. We’re probably one hundred percent back to work. We are a critical business. People need to have fuel in the marketplace. We try to be pretty strict, based on lessons learned relative to mask-wearing in our facilities and common areas,” Steve says.

Now that the pandemic has hopefully peaked, trade shows and industry events that were shuttered or conducted online have reopened to the public. In recent months, he has been traveling a great, visiting trade shows in person to meet peers, promote the company, and network.

Another thing that has not changed since the last profile is the company’s ownership structure. The firm remains “one hundred percent” family-owned, states Steve. His son, Stephen Hightower II works as its chief operating officer, while his daughter works on contracts. Other family members, including a nephew, are also employed by the company.

“I’m extremely proud. If something were to happen to me, I know the business would continue to move forward,” he says.

Hightower family members participate in an array of business and community organizations, including the fuel marketing association SIGMA, the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, the National Petroleum Council, the Cincinnati Opera, and the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE).

The company has ISO 14001:2015 certification for Environmental Management and ISO 9001:2015 certification for Quality Management. “When you talk about ISO, it’s not just words. It’s how you operate your business, how you document your business, how you continuously improve your business. We have customers that require, through their ISO procedures, that we are also ISO. A lot of the [original equipment manufacturers] require that. So, we have to maintain our ISO, our quality standards,” Steve states.

In addition to ISO, “We have continued to develop our ESG (environmental, social and governance) program that looks at ways in which we can reduce our environmental impact. Part of that would be Hightower EV Solutions. One initiative is to reduce carbon emissions, but there’s the social side of that as well. We’re continually making sure we’re doing the right thing by our communities—not just investing in our communities, but participating in the communities,” he says, adding, “Our company maintains its values of being an honest and socially responsible organization that has a reputation of working hard.”

Asked if he finds it odd that a company built around fossil fuels is so concerned about the environment, he says no. “It’s important for our company to remain relevant and forward-thinking. We know our customers. As they began to be forward-thinking, we also had to be forward-thinking. We never want to be the last horse and buggy on the street,” he explains.

HPC is not looking to get into hydrogen, touted as an up-and-coming miracle fuel for vehicles by some proponents. “I believe that the U.S. made a bet on electric as a primary fuel,” Steve says.

He anticipates that hydrogen will eventually make a mark in some parts of America, depending on federal government infrastructure funding. It is far too early for the company to get involved, given the nonexistent state of hydrogen infrastructure, and the company’s commitment to EVs.

In addition to the Middletown headquarters, HPC maintains offices in South Africa, New York, Michigan, and Washington, DC. The company has approximately seventy-five employees across all its companies, a number Steve believes will grow significantly once federal funding for infrastructure projects kicks in.

It follows a certain process when it comes to new hires. “Each and every time we go out, we look for the best possible person that we can. We don’t ask them about their politics. We don’t look at their color. We don’t look at their sexual orientation. We look at their qualification, abilities, attitude,” he says.

The result is HPC’s diversity, of which he is proud. The company is one of the leading African American fuel firms in the country. “We know there’s a level of uniqueness in our diversity, and there’s not much diversity in this industry. We’ve hopefully done a lot of things right,” he says.

Given the company’s ownership structure, it is not surprising that he describes Hightowers’ culture as family-oriented. “You have to be compassionate to your employees and their needs because they have families as well. My employees want the best for their families as well, their kids. Things happen, and when things happen, you have to be compassionate and understanding and try not to be strict or unreasonable when someone has a personal issue. You’ve got to support them, help them take care of it any way you can.”

Not counting COVID, he cites fuel shortages as the biggest challenge facing HPC at present. Global shortages and rising fuel prices are concerns that keep the company on its toes.

Still, Steve offers an upbeat forecast. “We really feel we can operate in the neighborhood of half-a-billion dollars. I am moving very hard to get to $1 billion over the next twelve months. That’s the ambitious part of me.”

Increased upstream business will likely drive this growth, he says. After reaching the billion-dollar mark, there is a new set of goals he wants to achieve. “Half a decade into the future, we want to be a global energy organization. At that point in time, then I can begin to look at possibly resting a little more,” he states, with a laugh.

The post This Gas and Diesel Downstream Wholesaler Goes Upstream and Electric<p class="company">Hightowers Petroleum Company</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.