On June 21st, 2022, DIGESTCONNECT hosted the second BDO ZoneCONNECT webinar featuring members from the Barnwell County, South Carolina BDO Zone designation. The virtual one-hour event was moderated by Jim Lane (Editor of TheDigest), and featured presentations from Jordan Solomon (President & CEO, Ecostrat; Chairman of the BDO Zone Initiative), Kay Maxwell (Vice President, Marketing, SouthernCarolina Alliance), Jack Shuler (Agribusiness Specialist and Special Projects Manager, South Carolina Department of Agriculture) and John Fleming (Chief Operating Officer, SouthernCarolina Alliance).
BDO ZoneCONNECT is a platform in collaboration with DIGESTCONNECT to enable ‘A’ and ‘AA’ Rated BDO Zone communities to connect, network, and socialize new BDO Zone ratings with interested investors, bio-based project developers, financiers, community leaders, and more.
Below, Jordan Solomon provides an understanding of Barnwell County’s ‘A’ Rating while Kay Maxwell, John Fleming and Jack Shuler provide a comprehensive overview of the robust Southern Carolina region, the availability of woody biomass and valuable tax incentives, and why Barnwell County chose to pursue a BDO Zone designation.
To view the webinar, please click below:
SUMMARY OF PRESENTER REMARKS
Jordan Solomon (CEO & President, Ecostrat Inc.; Chairman, BDO Zone Initiative)
- “Obtaining a BDO Zone designation is a material step forward in attracting new biobased plants. It really is a meaningful thing; mostly because it isn’t easy. These designations take months and regions are exhaustively pre-vetted for biomass feedstock, infrastructure supply reliability and supply chain resilience.”
- “Forest residues are dramatically underutilized in the Barnwell County BDO Zone. The rating is about to be upgraded to 600,000 bone dried tonnes per year – that’s enough to support a SAF plant. It’s conservative given the amount of feedstock that’s generated in this very, very, very robust region.”
- “We do hundreds of these kinds of assessments around the country, and quite frankly, in recent years we see very few that have the strong biomass supply chain attributes combined with these exceptional infrastructure attributes that we see in Barnwell County. This really is a pre-paved runway here for SAF development and for all sorts of woody biobased development.”
Kay Maxwell (Vice President, Marketing, SouthernCarolina Alliance)
- “Our job is to help the counties of our region to recruit good industries to invest in the region, creating jobs, and a broader tax base which is why we are pursuing biomass facilities as a good economic development choice for our area.“
- “Our region supports an array of diverse industry clusters with forest and building products as one of our primary industry clusters. Most people are aware that South Carolina is home to robust agribusiness which includes forest products.”
- “The Southern Carolina region will welcome this type of alternative energy production and we have the diversity of existing industry and workforce to support biomass facilities and we’re strategically located in an area with proximity to ports, rapidly growing clusters of industries in alternative energies, transportation and wood product sectors.”
Jack Shuler (Agribusiness Specialist and Special Projects Manager, South Carolina Department of Agriculture)
- “The forestry and labor market is healthy. So in short, this area is a low risk, high comfort level for biomass investment.”
- “To support our labor force and companies who invest in our communities, the SouthernCarolina Alliance region is home to the distinguished Clemson University Edisto Research Center which is located in Barnwell County. The research center is dedicated to agribusiness research and could be invaluable as a partner in research and development and innovation at your production facility.”
- “Our workforce training program is among one of the best in the nation and we are very proud of what the state has to offer to those willing to locate here.”
John Fleming (Chief Operating Officer, SouthernCarolina Alliance)
- “The South Carolina Advanced technology park is located in Barnwell and it’s the center of the BDO Zone. We, as an economic development organization, create product to make it available for industries to come and try to remove risk and barriers just like the BDO Zone Rating. We also go through the state certification process on this industrial park to show that it is ready for things to move in.”
- “Our communities not only have the feedstock to support major biomass energy but these communities are very supportive of the wood product and alternative energy along with heavy manufacturing. All of our areas are fully supportive of those. Our region is a host to a wonderful trend of green and sustainable industries that continues to grow.”
- “We have the right workforce as you can see from the number of forest product companies we already have. We have a workforce that understands forest products and we have the right business climate.”
- “South Carolina is a manufacturing state. We have the tax structure investment and particularly the opportunity zones to support the industries coming in. Again, we have a lot of sites; all planned out, buffered, industrial sites with appropriate infrastructure in place such as gas and major power. Most of all, we’re actively pursuing biomass industry.”
To learn more about investing in the SouthernCarolina Regional Development Alliance, please visit their website here. If you would like to connect directly with Kay Maxwell, please contact kmaxwell@southerncarolina.org.
For more information on the Barnwell County BDO Zone designation, please contact Jack Shuler (jshuler3@sc.rr.com) or John Fleming (jfleming@southerncarolina.org).
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