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VMG Industry in FEZ Mogilev to build boiler to burn wood chips, allay environmental fears
The VMG Industry enterprise in the free economic zone Mogilev intends to build a boiler house that burns wood chips, BelTA learned from IOOO VMG Industry Director Kirill Vyborny.
According to the source, the VMG Industry enterprise is a vertically integrated woodworking complex where wood goes all the way from a log to a finished product. The enterprise needs a boiler house in order to get rid of the byproducts the future expansion of the enterprise will generate. “We will be able to create over 70 jobs. The investments will be close to €14.5 million. With this boiler house the enterprise will have virtually zero waste because all the byproducts such as chips and bark will be burned,” the director noted.
The VMG Industry enterprise is located in the free economic zone Mogilev as well as several other major enterprises. People living in nearby populated localities and the city of Mogilev are concerned about the ecological state of the area after the expansion of the enterprise. According to Kirill Vyborny, the company pays close attention to environmental matters.
The executive said: “We export about 95% of the output and cooperate with leading European companies, which have high requirements for the quality of products they buy. Apart from that, our manufacturing processes are regulated by strict standards – domestic and international ones alike. We have to keep making high-quality products while keeping the environmental footprint at its minimum in order to keep up with competition abroad.”
A public hearing of the future construction project took place in the agrotown of Veino. During the meeting VMG Industry representatives, ecologists, engineers, representatives of the Mogilev District administration and the Veino rural council tried to explain to the local residents what they may expect after the enterprise grows larger and a boiler house to burn wood chips is built.
Yelena Sokolovskaya, an ecologist with the engineering and consulting company Eneca, is in charge of the environmental side of the project. The specialist explained that the future boiler house will use thermal oil boilers of Lithuanian make. They will produce exhausts of the same variety gas-burning boilers do. Solid particles will be the only difference. The design of the boiler house provides for installing multicyclone dust collectors and electrostatic precipitators. Nitrogen oxides will be scrubbed from the exhausts as well. The supplier of the boiler equipment guarantees that the exhaust parameters will be lower than Belarusian standards. However, the VMG Industry management has decided in favor of additional purification systems to improve the environmental situation in the area.
The enterprise intends to mothball its three cogeneration plants that burn natural gas until the new boiler house that burns wood chips is operational. At present the atmospheric pollution generated by VMG Industry represents less than 4% of the environmental footprint of all the enterprises located in the free economic zone (FEZ) Mogilev.