Brightwater mines timber niche

A CHANGE of tack from mining to forestry has paid off for Brightwater Engineering Solutions, which won the ‘environmental project of the year’ award at the 2010 Australian Bulk Handling Awards, held in Brisbane last month.

Welshpool-based Brightwater Engineering, part of the New Zealand-owned Brightwater Group, won the award for a wood pellet export facility the company designed and constructed for a client in Albany.

Brightwater Engineering general manager Mathew Fletcher said the initial target of Brightwater’s foray into Western Australia was the mining sector, however when the GFC hit not long after the company set up shop, things changed.

“A lot of the strong pre-existing companies were starting to struggle a bit [at the time], so there really wasn’t any room for a new entrant,” Mr Fletcher told WA Business News.

“We decided to stick to our niche area of wood processing and biomass energy projects.”

The Brightwater Group has been servicing New Zealand’s energy, industrial and resource sectors since the late 1970s, and has a second Australian office in Melbourne.

When Mr Fletcher arrived in WA three years ago, he brought across some key staff from New Zealand and has since grown Brightwater Engineering’s local workforce to 15 permanent staff.

To date, Mr Fletcher said Brightwater Engineering has delivered more than $70 million of projects around WA, predominantly for Melbourne-based biomass pellet manufacturer Plantation Energy in Albany.

Brightwater Engineering designed and constructed two biomass pellet factories within the designated timber processing precinct located 15 kilometres north of Albany worth $30 million, as well as a $13 million storage and export facility within the Port of Albany.

Mr Fletcher said the port facility was designed to receive, store and load-out 250,000 tonnes of wood pellets each year, which was then exported by Plantation Energy to Europe as a renewable energy source.

Mr Fletcher said Brightwater Engineering was actively working on new projects and hoped to leverage off its existing relationships with clients including BHP Billiton, which engaged the firm to design, engineer and supply a biomass fuel handling system for its Worsley Alumina refinery.

“We’re dealing with companies who are traditionally heavy users of gas and coal to get them to turn to biomass as well; another company is Wespine,” he said.

Mr Fletcher said softwood saw miller Wespine Industries, which is jointly owned by Wesfarmers and Fletcher Building, has engaged Brightwater Engineering for a potential biomass energy plant which “could displace the use of natural gas from the Varanus Island site”.

“Other upcoming projects include woodchip handling equipment for [surface manufacturer] Laminex and a biomass energy power station for a customer in South Australia,” he said.