Winter weather is not doing very much to keep Graphyte officials from working to make the new Pine Bluff-based carbon casting industry fully operational by July.
Barclay Rogers, founder and CEO of Graphyte, said Tuesday the carbon dioxide-removing company at 3411 N. Hutchinson, at Jefferson Industrial Park, is in the commissioning phase, meaning that the necessary equipment has been ordered and is being installed. Rogers announced the arrival of Graphyte in November, adding that tech mogul Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures is an investment group behind it.
“We plan to move as quickly as possible,” Rogers said, on bringing Graphyte fully online. Graphyte has secured a storage site between Pine Bluff and Sheridan in addition to the headquarters on Hutchinson, which he calls the “Loblolly Project” in honor of the widely grown pine tree in south Arkansas. (“It’s also a fun word,” he explained.) Other Graphyte locations elsewhere are in development.
Rogers had hoped to share details about the commissioning phase during a Pine Bluff Regional Chamber of Commerce Lunch and Learn event Tuesday, but the Chamber postponed it due to the snow-covered roads. A rescheduled date is yet to be announced.
Graphyte has drawn national attention because of its proprietary technology called carbon casting, which aims to fight climate change by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide. Graphyte seeks to take agricultural byproducts as a feedstock to the process and convert them into blocks of dry biomass that won’t be returned to the atmosphere. So far, Arkansas River Rice, Potlatch Deltic and Malvern’s Anthony Timberlands have signed on as suppliers, according to Rogers.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Graphyte began to take delivery of biomass last Friday.
Jefferson County native and resident Nathan Davis is Graphyte’s plant manager and said the company will conduct interviews for full-time positions within the next two weeks. He joined Graphyte after reading an article about its arrival in Pine Bluff.
“I’ve been in the agriculture field all my life,” Davis said. “What Graphyte is doing, it’s a process no one else is taking on, and it’s with a small amount of costs. It’s unique to the Pine Bluff facility.”
Davis hopes Graphyte can employ 20 within the next three months, another benefit to the local economy he mentioned.
“Any jobs to the area is beneficial,” he said.
A hopper is fabricated on a briquette maker inside Graphyte’s headquarters at the Jefferson Industrial Park on Tuesday. (Special to The Commercial/Nathan Davis)