[Taildragerdriver]

I went into Baker City, Oregon yesterday to meet with the county economic development people. These people have the job of trying to get businesses started in our county.

I spent about 2 hours with them and we went over the concept in some detail and discussed the plan that I generally have on moving this forward.

We discussed the products we might want to sell from the plant.

Possible Products

1. Bulk charcoal to sell to farmers.

2. Charcoal packed in 30 to 50 pound bags to sell at garden stores.

3. Charcoal and Mychorrizal amendments in 30 to 50 pound bags.

4. Boi-Oil for bunker fuel

5. Bio-Oil Stabilized with glycerol to be sold for Home heating oil.

6. Bio-Oil mixed 50% with Biodiesel for truck fuel.

We had quite a discussion about which of these might be best. We also discussed that it wouldn't be a good idea to try to make all of these products at once but to choose two or three of them and do a market test to see if I could sell them.

There were interesting and far ranging discussions about each product an its viability at the scale that we might plan to utilize excess forest fuels.

This was basically a discussion of each product if we planned to base our business plan on a 1 DTPD (Dry Ton Per Day) plant or a 50 DTPD plant.

It turns out the selected products would be almost entirely different depending on which plant we chose to go forward with.

Choice 1 DTPD vs 50 DTPD Plant

We discussed the idea that almost all of these products are completely new to the area probably even to the entire United States. Nobody is currently making or selling anything like any of these products.

On the positive side there is for all practical purposes no competition for them except the regular heating oil or other garden products.

On the negative side there is no public demand for any of them right now.

All of the above led to the discussion of the feeling that these markets had to be tested and developed. This may not be trivial and would lead to the pretty obvious conclusion that the 1DTPD plant is the most reasonable to go forward and would have less risk.

We also discussed the idea that we may be able to get this 1DTPD plant up and running with in the next year with the local investors being able to supply much of the capital. While is might take several years to secure the funding for the 50DTPD plant which many times as costly.

This decision narrowed my efforts to research costs for my business plan.

Best Products based on 1 DTPD plant

With this decision made. We went over all the products again and decided the bests products would be:

Bio-Oil Stabilized with glycerol to be sold for Home heating oil.

Charcoal packed in 30 to 50 pound bags to sell at garden stores.

and possibly

Charcoal and Mychorrizal amendments in 30 to 50 pound bags.

The other products would not be researched to see if there is a market for them at least initially.

Getting Licenses and Permits to Install the Plant

One of the things the economic development department does is help to document what permits would be required. They will help me find out what permits are required in the US and in the State of Oregon.

In this area fortunately we are not plowing this ground ourselves. There is a similar plant going in down in Southern Arizona that we are partnering with although it is a research plant and doesn't plan to sell any of its products. They have the same issues for US License and Permit issues.

Therefor I asked the economic development staff to focus on Oregon permitting.

Economic Incentives

A second issue then are the economic incentives that both the state and the federal government offer to alternative energy or biomass production facilities.

I asked the economic development people to help define all of these that are available as well.

It turns out that most of these are tax incentives, which really doesn't help you get started but makes it possible to make greater profits once you are making a profit. It has no affect on your start up costs and funding needs.

So the key here is can we figure out how to make a profit so we can get the benefit of the tax incentives.

Current estimates of Profitability

Based on my current analysis it looks like purchase and operation of two of 1DTPD plants could be profitable. We would set them up side by side and run them with the same amount of labor with double production. Of course this is based on proving that the quantities and prices in my estimates are accurate.

The main sticking point is paying for labor all the rest of the investments are pretty clear and the source of feedstock is available. The price of the heating oil is pretty clear. The unknown is what could we sell the bagged products for and how much demand is there for these products.

In fact I just checked and all of our heating oil could be sold within 20 miles of the plant in the two small communities each with less than 300 people and the surrounding farms.

I have heard from people on the forum that there is a general interest in bagged charcoal but at least to start with we want to sell the product locally and not get into big shipping costs.

So this is the current status is: I'm working on the business plan with more specifics and hope to have it done in the next few weeks and start the ball rolling.

I welcome any and all comment and suggestion as I go through this effort.

[freeztar]

The biggest problem I see is that you don't have a market for the char sales.
I'm not a marketing guru, but allow me to suggest some possible strategies.

Community Outreach
Perhaps you could set up presentations locally so farmers can see the benefit of adding char to their soil. All the resources you would need for such a presentation can be found in these forums. If you need help setting one up, then just ask.

Packaging
I recommend packaging the char in bags that have plentiful information about the benefits of char. This way, a curious farmer walking through the local garden store might see a bag of char and read the bag to see what the big deal is. Otherwise, they might just pass it by. Also, this is a good place to advertise the "localness" as well as all the green benefits from pyrolysis.

That's all I've got right now, but I'll keep thinking on it...

[Taildragerdriver]

Freeztar:

Thanks for the reply.

I had given some of these ideas you suggest a bit of thought and probably plan to do most if not all those things in the long run. I'm not sure they will help during my business planning efforts.

My efforts in the next few weeks will be to contact several garden and farm stores in a reasonable distance of my location. I have talked to several people that work in these stores. Those working in small single stores or small local chains indicated they might have an interest in one or both of these products. None of these folks were management and suggested my next step would be to make an appointment to talk to their management.

That is exactly what I plan to do next to test for a market. I want to talk to them about how much they would be willing to buy or would I have to consign with them to start with. I also want to see if they can help me set the wholesale price for a bag of Charcoal or Charcoal and Mychorrizal mix. Then I can add those prices into my business planning calculations.

Once I move from planning to marketing I surely would plan to have presentations at these kinds of stores. These would include signs to mount above pallets of bags, handout documents for the stores, and gardening sessions where we would teach about the value of char. In fact I have a niece who works in a nursery and I have talked to the owner of the nursery and he would be very supportive. They currently do a lot of sessions for gardeners in the spring and I could be included once we have a product to sell.

As for marketing to farmers, I have talked to lots of farmers especially the high production guys I see at farm auctions, they are very interested. The problem is they need some cost benefit analysis and they also need access to very large quantities of char. If I put on the char at what I now consider to be the optimal rate I could use the entire annual production of the 2 1DTPD plants on one single pasture I own. So my current concept is we can't go for farmers as customers until we move up to a 50 DTPD plant. This was part of the discussion with the economic development staff and we decided the risk vs investment was pretty large if we chose that plant.

So in the short run gardeners don't need the same proof of gains and return on investment the farmers do. Therefor it makes much more sense to sell to them with our limited production of char.

[Ahmabeliever]

On innoculated charcoal - method? Live fungi wont survive without a host. The spores could be innoculated though.

You need a spin doctor

meet the man of a thousand faces (OK I get bored and do something else ok?)

Edited a newspaper once. Don't expect me to edit posts for grammar/spelling though.

This'll ramble worse than usual sorry I'm a bit hungover. Happy Easter!

you could photograph and document your test plots with charcoal amendment. It's better to use your actual product but if you have charcoal you wish to sell, and charcoal in the experiments, it is not misleading. Provided your test charcoal is pyrolised, and subsequently, so is your product.

Soon as you have your product immediately start test grows with it to use for future advertising.

A trick to advertising is 3's. When a customer sees something 3 times it gets lodged in their memory, or so it is said in advertising circles.

That's why you often see multimedia campaigns launched - press radio and television.

That type of campaign costs a lot of money, which most start-up's don't have. But you can get all of the above, for free.

I'm about to launch a fishtank that virtually cleans itself. I doubt I'll pay a cent for advertising because I can create so much spin off what I've got there. Locally first, of course, then spend money when I can afford it, to spread out. I can create so many good news stories with this thing, and so can you. The news is short of positive input.

Stories - Clean up hydroponics, Clean up aquaculture, custom environments for endangered fish, food security, water conservation, rare plants... off the top of my head, and follow ups - breeding success with endangered fish, aquaponics out producing hydroponics, environmental; stories about damage from existing industry followed by the 'solution'.

You have a VERY newsworthy subject there.

We'll get to what an editor wants to see shortly - the detail. Newsworthy is a huge step in the right direction.

Start small. You have made plants grow better with charcoal. Special pyrolised charcoal, and send this story to gardening magazines, radio garden shows and garden columns. If you have a local garden show hold off till you have a couple of 'hits' out there already then give them the full TP better crops bio-fuel carbon sink environmental waste arsenal.

Stories you could write about, or get someone to write about, first put the idea out there about charcoal, and tree wastes, smaller stuff in the picture, teasers to give a few links to the main event.

You could have environmental groups supporting your cause for you too, all types of lobbyists, the time is ripe! Be careful of extreme idiots of course.

Planning to use charcoal to 'save the farm'
Increased Crop Growth
Making firebreaks/forestry safer
Cleaning up bio-wastes
Then pull out the bio-fuel and carbon sink stuff after you already have interest/free advertising on the other points.
Utilise the other plant, the research they do, write about it, followed by, your plant, you're doing it!

Now, what does an editor want.

Who - who are the people involved in the story?
What - what is the subject matter about? The point?
Why - Why did this happen or why are you doing this?
Where - On the moon, on your farm, in the forest, local carries weight...
When - Recent event? Opening when? Started research? Planned deadlines?
How - Some working knowledge, but in this topic, unless targeting intellectuals, KISS.

And a happy ending ie: And they all lived happily ever after.

A very good book on marketing, which I've successfully launched 2 business from with (virtually) no advertising start up costs - How To Really Write A Marketing Plan.

So many lightbulbs went off when I read that book I'd sit up all hours devouring it and scribbling notes by the end I was ready and went off and started a business that had never been done here before (comedy circuit).

You could have conservative talkback pick it up as a global warming topic.
TV will love the bio-fuel and better cropping.
Community organisations should all be informed that you will take the wood waste when they are doing clean-ups. (If you can).
Do a demo at the local schools. They'll all tell thier parents.

1,2,3 get it in their heads....

Winning hearts and minds

[davidgmills]

Just saw your thread. I kept waiting for an update but didn't know where to look. I have always thought you would be the one to kick TP off in a big way, because you are a farmer and the rest of us are not.

I will say this about the selling of small bags of charcoal. You will have competition. I buy mine from Cowboy Charcoal in 8 lb bags for about $5. Also one of the major charcoal companies -- I think it is Matchlight -- is also making lump charcoal for about the same price. These of course are for barbecue not soil remediation but I use them in my soil.

To really compete you would have to do something different -- make something specifically for soil remediation. Of course if you did that, then you would lose sales for barbecue.

My soil continues to improve. I live in the suburbs on about .4 acres. But my trees seem to be improving and potted plants are doing well as are my gardens. My goal is to put one ton of charcoal on my property before I die. So far I have added about 100 pounds. Long way to go.

[Taildragerdriver]

Well its been a long time and I guess it is time for another update. It has been an incredibly busy summer. Lots still going on but progress is being made. Sometimes I wonder if I would have gotten into this idea if I knew all the range of stuff I was going to get into. Well hear goes.

Federal Department of Environmental Quality Waste Storage Permit

I found out I had to get a permit to store piles of logs and chips, I was also worried about what would happen if I had a spill of the bio-oil. So about 6 months ago I started that process.

Well as you can imagine the DEQ people in Oregon had never heard of a biochar plant. So instead of just responding back with what was required they sent my proposal before there executive committee. (I didn't even there was an executive committee) So after 4 months of waiting to get on there agenda we finally got a reply.

It turns out they were not the least bit concerned about a spill but they were worried about leaving a pile of logs or chips behind if the venture was not successful. As you can imagine there are many of these in Oregon and I guess as the wood decomposes there is some environmental damage.

So they proposed a testing period where we would pay $500 each six months for the first year. During that period they would monitor our process and see how it was going. If all appears to go well we could get a future permit that would be no charge and called a recycling facility or on the other end of the spectrum have to pay $3000 for a permit and pay $.30 per ton we process. I'm not completely clear on how they would decided. But at least we now know what the costs are worst case.

Oregon Land Use Planning Conditional Use Permitt

So now that we know what to do to apply for the above DEQ permit they told me that I have to get written notification that the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) Zoning rules have been met.

So I had to go into my county zoning office and find out if the actual site we are going to put the plant on which is zoned industrial permits this kind of use. Well I found out I meet all the criteria but one. If any gasses (smoke) is produced you have to apply for a conditional use permit. They tell me it will be no problem in this rural area (They are concerned about adding air pollutants mostly in cities) so even though there is a very little that escapes but there is some, I will have to apply for a conditional use permit that the planning committee will have to approve. The problem is that I will have to go before the planning committee and get there approval another couple of months work and time.

Federal Department of Environmental Quality Air Permit

I knew this requirement was coming because my partner project in Arizona was going though it. I figured I would wait till he was done and had successfully gotten his permit before I applied for mine. His is an experimental plant processing only 1/2 ton of organic matter per day. Our plant will be an operational processing 10 tons of wood per day.

So I have to multiply each of the outputs times 20 but there should be not problem since they are very small. I'm just submitting the forms for this application for this permit now.

It will be interesting to see if this process goes along faster.

Field Testing of Bio Char

Our work with Los Alamos is moving ahead in the last few months we have installed 3 paired plots installing approximately 10% charcoal in the top foot of the soil. These will be monitored for growth, water holding capacity and a number of other soil fertility measure. They are installed in pasture land in arid parts of New Mexico to see if there is increased growth. These same conditions have been given early testing in the green house and appear to have good results under controlled conditions. Now we will see how they work in real life on this ranch. They produced the charcoal in a pit method using local logging slash. This experimental ranch will then treat whole pastures if the paired plots are successful.


Well I see the system logged me out. I was able to capture this but lost some of my work. I'll submit this for now and see if I can get a bit more done at a later date.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver.

[freeztar]

Good to hear that you are still working on this. Kudos for keeping at it despite all the hoop jumping. It's pretty ironic that you have to get all these env. permits when what you are doing will ultimately help the environment. That's goverment for ya.