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'Beast' turns wood and asphalt waste into product Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell "The Beast," a semi-truck-sized portable wood chipper, munches on wood Monday at the Boise Cascade mill in White City. The device, manufactured in Michigan and destined for Idaho, was on display for local mills, loggers and orchard growers. The device is marketed as a solution to the problem of wood waste in orchards and at logging sites. Such material historically has been burned, although less so in recent years. With the Beast it can be turned into a value-added, salable product such as mulch, animal bedding, fiberboard material or fuel for cogeneration plants. "The Beast," an industrial-strength horizontal green waste grinder produced by Michigan-based Bandit Industries, was put on display Monday morning at Boise Cascade's White City plant for a demonstration. It's a device that eliminates the need to burn logging and orchard waste, for instance, turning it into a salable product. The machine is actually en route to its new owner in Idaho, but was demonstrated for members of the timber, orchard, and bio-mass industries, where a similar unit might be used. Andy McMurry of WesSpur Tree Products from Bellingham, Wash., is the Northwest distributor for Bandit Industries' Beast, and is part of the team transporting the machine east. The portable chipper ranges in cost from $225,000 to $275,000 and can be transported into the woods or orchard setting to process wood waste on site, McMurry said. Such waste was previously burned. The behemoth measures 10 feet wide, 36 feet long, 13 feet high, and weighs a hefty 51,000 pounds. It can also be situated in a mill's log yard, a bio-mass processing plant, or anywhere "green" material needs to be reduced to chips for use in the manufacture of other products. The machine's chips can be used for compost, mulch, animal bedding, or fiberboard, or used to fuel an electric power plant. The Beast uses an interchangeable set of blades that allows the operator to predetermine the chips' size and shape. "It's a unique machine," McMurry said. "It actually cuts the material instead of using brute force to pound it apart like a hammer mill would. It's used in many applications. You're actually taking a product and adding value to it as opposed to burning ... which is becoming more and more regulated." The Beast also chews up old asphalt shingle roofing and asphalt road chunks. The processed material is recycled in asphalt batch plants for use in new roads. McMurry said only 12 Beasts are produced monthly in Michigan, with a waiting list of buyers ready to put the mega-grinders to work worldwide. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.