By Gary A. DeVon
Managing Editor
Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune
Byron McCann's 'BIOFUEL' Volkswagen.
OROVILLE – An Oroville company plans within the month to start crushing 48 tons of canola seeds a day to create oil.
To start, Carbon Cycle Crushing will get its canola seed from Canada where it is that nation’s biggest crop. They also have high hopes local farmers will plant canola and camelina to be processed at the plant. Oil produced from the seeds will be sold for lubricants and to use in biofuels, according to CCC representatives.
“One Super B truck can haul about 48 tons and that’s what we plan on crushing daily, with a goal of crushing 200 tons a day when we are at full operation,” said Tim King, COO of the company. “I’d love to see half of what we need come from local farmers. I feel it would be a beneficial crop in this area.”
Towards that end King has met with local ranchers at several different locations and he says interest has been positive.
“There are 20,000 acres of potential farmland that could yield crops that we could use in the crusher,” King said.
King and Byron McCann, with Accent partners Group LLC, the CCC’s new CEO, met last Wendesday in Oroville with others working on getting the canola crushing operation going. McCann and his father are investors in the company. McCann, who describes himself as having been a “serial-entrepreneur” in cable and software has focused the last four years on green technologies He said he was impressed with King’s plans to create oil for lubricants and biofuels. One of McCann’s investments is in Propel Biofuel Stations which offer flexfuel and biodiesel in fueling stations in Western Washington and California. He is also the co-chairman of the Northwest Energy Angels.
“We are starting to realize the dream of building a sustainable community and Oroville is our template,” McCann said.
McCann said the company has signed a lease with a purchase option with Gold Digger Apples on buildings that used to be part of Oro Fruit. He said they would finish installing the crushing equipment and making upgrades so milling the seeds into oil can begin soon.
“I don’t have an exact date but we will start crushing within the next month,” King said. “We want a truck to come in one day and the processed oil and meal to ship out the next day. We don’t want to store anything – seeds in products out.
He added that they didn’t have a list of buyers waiting to purchase the oil and meal, because most buyers want to see samples of the particular product being produced first.
“That’s why we’re anxious to get our first crush,” King said.
According to King he had a list of 10 communities that he considered for the canola processing and Oroville had been at the bottom of the list.
“Then everything just came together here and Oroville went from number 10 to number one,” he explained. “There are several factors that made us chose to start here.”
King said the fact that there were a number of suitable empty buildings and the Heavy Haul Corridor that allows high capacity Super B trailers on the highway between the Canadian border and the plant were big factors. The fact that the railroad both starts and ends in Oroville was also a factor, he said.
“The Cascade and Columbia River Railroad is obviously excited they’ll be getting more business,” King said. “And of course the suitable land that could be planted in canola and the support we’ve gotten from the community are important.”
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