ASA HUTCHINSON (cont.)

animal bedding and woodpellet fuel. The company also builds pellet-burning barbecue pits, which it will distribute from its plant in Hope. Dansons will produce pellets made from cherry, maple, white oak, elm, sweet gum, sassafras, and mesquite.

Dansons estimates that over the next three years, it will create fifty to one hundred jobs in Hope, which has a population of 10,000 and an unemployment rate of about 4.6 percent.

At least two other Arkansas companies produce wood pellets – Fiber Resource in Pine Bluff and Biomass in Monticello.

The wood-pellet industry is a perfect fit for Arkansas.

It’s another tool for managing our forests. It reduces sawmill waste by creating another product from the scraps. It creates another market that allows landowners to sell small diameter trees that generally aren’t valuable. The pellet plants need wood.

Arkansas has wood. The plants need employees.

Arkansas offers a solid workforce. The top reason it’s a good fit, perhaps, is that pelleters are producing wood pellets for grilling, and we Arkansans love our barbecue.