Alachua Post

Governor Charlie Crist and Tom Pelham, Secretary of the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) granted $750,000 of state funds to benefit a foreign company who will manufacture wood pellets for the European power industry.

Green Circle Bio Energy Inc., owned by the Swedish company JCE Group, will get water and sewer connections to their new industrial complex, thanks to Florida taxpayers.

JCE Group, a wealthy Swedish offshore oil rig and shipping company, will set up an industrial wood pellet operation in Jackson County.

The new facility is scheduled to go on stream at the end of 2007. Their planned production output is 550,000 tons of wood pellets a year for export.

JCE Group will ship these vast quantities of wood pellets to several European power plants from the port at Panama City.

Wood pellets are becoming an energy commodity traded worldwide. North Florida woodland is a prime target.

The Swedish company will have access to Florida's 16 million acres of forest land.

DCA and the governor approved the money for Jackson County to benefit JCE through a Small Cities Community Development Block Grant.

JCE Group, headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, was founded in 1971 by J. Christer Ericsson, who is active in the shipping and offshore oil rig business.

The JCE Group wood pellet plant will be the largest in the world.

The company will use Swiss and Canadian high performance pelletizing equipment. Trees will be logged out of forests, cut, crushed in hammermills, pulverized, dried and made into combustible pellets.

Florida Department of Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson hosted the Swedish company at the recent Florida Farm to Fuel Summit. Bronson would like to see Florida as the biggest producer and exporter of biomass in the U.S.

Jimmy Cheek, senior vice president of Agriculture and Natural Resources Dept. at UF and IFAS` administrative head, said shipping pellets to Europe is great for Florida and the world, on a recent visit to Jackson County.

JCE will be competing for southern forests with two other energy companies.

Dixie Pellets LLC of Selma, Alabama, is barging European-bound wood pellets down the Alabama River and shipping out of Mobile.

Fram Renewable Fuels near Baxley, Ga., will ship 145,000 tons- a-year to Europe through ports at Savannah and Brunswick, Ga.

As Florida forests and soils get quickly depleted, European businesses will have to look elsewhere for their "green" energy.

Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) are used to benefit low and moderate income persons to prevent poverty and to address urgent community development needs.

This an example of our leaders misspending public poverty prevention funds and giving away our natural resources that we need here in Florida.

Please write and call Governor Charlie.Crist@myflorida.com and
Phone him at 850-488-7146
Contact Secretary Tom Pelham,Secretary,
Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA)
Phone: (850) 488-8466

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