CIBIO 2019, held at Expotrade in Pinhais, Paraná, Brazil, from 25 to 27 June, once again stood out in the biomass industry. The fair, which runs alongside the biomass congress, drew a very select audience from Brazil and abroad, such as businessman José Inácio of the Chilean company 3 Vulcanes.
A Marrari customer, the company uses an UmiChip inline moisture meter on its sawdust dryer for pellet production. He explained that the focus is on meeting growing demand from households in Chile, which used to rely heavily on firewood, a cause of serious health problems; pellets, being a cleaner fuel, emit far fewer pollutants. “The fair was very good for making new contacts and assessing investment options to cut costs in our process and increase production, since the market has strong demand for pellets,” says José Inácio.
Automation and Industry 4.0 at the Marrari booth
Many customers and business owners visited the Marrari booth looking for ways to cut costs, especially Industry 4.0 solutions. Ciro Pavanello, a major biomass producer in the Pomerode and Jaraguá do Sul region of Santa Catarina who supplies textile companies, says commercial and payment processes should become increasingly automatic to make trading more reliable. He says the Volume X chip volume measurement system has greatly improved control over his purchases of wood for chipping: his suppliers had to adapt to payment per m³, which cut losses from empty space in the loads.
Another highlight of CIBIO was visits from sawn timber companies looking to make better use of their production residues (sawdust and chips), mainly for pellet production, to add more value to the material. We were visited by Daniel Pscheidt, industrial director of Adami in Caçador, Santa Catarina, which recently built one of the largest pellet plants in Brazil. Besides using 100% of the mill’s own residues, it will buy biomass from companies in the region to meet its demand.
Launch: the M75 mini
One of Marrari’s highlights and launches at the event was the M75 mini, with a friendlier display and, now with 20 litres, better ergonomics, while keeping the same quality and accuracy. According to the customers who visited us, portable moisture meters for firewood and chips are already widely used to trade biomass on an energy basis, and they are now looking at measuring material density instantly as well, to make samples more reliable. That is easy with the portable M75D and the inline DensiDry system.
CIBIO closed on 27 June with several deals signed and many new contacts, bringing plenty of optimism about the future of the biomass market in Brazil.
Author: Joaquim Almeida, Sales Manager at Marrari Automação
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