A Wawa entrepreneur who developed an innovative wood pelletizing machine has sold his technology to a southern Ontario manufacturer who is taking his invention to a world market.
Gerry Bugyra’s ‘NorWa Horizontal Pellet Machine’ is on display at a Mississauga factory where Ekofuels Technology is taking orders and deposits for a 2008 production run. 
Last February, Bugyra sold all his interests and intellectual property in the pelletizing machine he designed from a prototype in his Wawa shop.
Ekofuels Technology Inc. is the exclusive maker and distributor of his equipment design and is proceeding with an international marketing strategy to start selling machines to clients overseas.
Bugyra built the “show mill” in Mississauga for investor tours and has redesigned his turn-key system allowing for an operator to quick-change punches and dies within minutes.
He was under contract to the company as a consultant until the end of January.
Years before in his Wawa shop, Bugyra came up with a milling system that was a more energy efficient and a production improvement over the conventional ring-die system.
The fully-automated system can now pelletize any kind of hard and softwood waste, hog ends, stumps, pallets, construction material, hemp, straw, switchgrass, compost, manure and peat moss.
Bugyra, a trained industrial millwright and diesel mechanic, once wanted to establish a chain of pellet mills across the North, converting wood waste into fuel to heat greenhouses and provide animal bedding.
But he didn’t have the access to capital.
His machine, however, caught the attention of Starwood Manufacturing, a Mississauga hardwood flooring company, which wanted an environmentally friendly way of disposing of their wood waste. Bugyra struck a deal and joined them in 2005.
Starwood was eventually absorbed by a venture capital firm headed by Steven Chepa and the pellet mill project now runs under the banner of Ekofuels Technology.
Bugyra said last February’s $1.3 million deal turning over the machine to Chepa Ventures basically got him out of debt.
His Wawa operation was running until Weyerhaeuser closed its local strandboard mill in October. The machinery is now for up sale.
Now he’s looking to the future as a freelancing consultant specializing in biomass and alternative energy solutions using wood, hemp and switchgrass.
Bugyra says with 1.2 million tonnes of world demand for wood pellets, Northern Ontario’s rich resource region lags far behind Europe in the use of renewable fuels.
Bioenergy, which produces electricity and heat from wood and other plant fibres, is a fast-growing sector.
The pellet industry has grown dramatically in recent years and has become widely accepted for both home and industrial uses because of its zero carbon emission qualities.
British Columbia companies like Pinnacle Pellet are rapidly expanding and southern Ontario growers, with the largest greenhouse industry in North America, are seeking to change from natural gas to biomass boilers.
Bugyra who has made presentations to Austrian and German trade delegations said his European contacts shake their heads at the amount of wood wasted in Canada.
Bugyra said Austria will be the third largest consumer of wood pellet and biomass energy in the world by 2015 and are willing to buy wood slash for pelletizing.
In Austria, many people use wood pellets to heat apartment buildings the way North Americans use oil or natural gas. District heating plans in the North could be created in municipal industrial parks, says Bugyra.
Canadians may complain about high oil prices and natural gas, but “we’ve got everything at our fingertips,” says Bugyra.
Given the recent mill closures in the North’s forestry industry, he says, “we should concentrate our colleges and universities in the North in developing biomass and bioenergy opportunities.”
In shuttered sawmills like the White River operation, he says up to 50 per cent of the waste pile of sawdust, bark and wood chunks have huge potential to create a pelletizing operation that can create as many as 30 jobs.
