OREANDA-NEWS. Canadian wood pellet producer Viridis Energy and its subsidiaries are for sale. The company had earlier failed to meet a lender's deadline to pay debts owed by one of its subsidiaries.

Viridis appointed US biomass industry consultancy FutureMetrics as the sales representative of the company and its three subsidiaries. The company will either be sold entirely through a stock purchase or by each individual subsidiary, FutureMetrics said today.

The company is comprised of the subsidiaries Okanagan Pellet (OPC), Scotia Atlantic Biomass and trading arm Viridis Merchants.

Viridis' lender, Royal Bank of Canada, demanded that OPC pay in full outstanding debts totalling over $2mn by 18 April. Viridis was unable to make the payment. Viridis will co-operate with the bank to facilitate the sale of OPC's assets, it said.

Scotia Atlantic Biomass owns a 120,000 t/yr industrial-grade pellet plant in Nova Scotia, but the plant ran below nameplate capacity in 2015 because of challenges in securing affordable wood fibre.

OPC owns a 60,000 t/yr plant in British Columbia that produces premium pellets. Viridis earlier this month said it had ceased operations at the OPC plant following upgrade work.

Including Viridis Merchants' contracted volumes, Viridis' saleable volume is over 300,000t/yr of wood pellets.