Enviva breaks ground on Port of Pascagoula terminal

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (WLOX) - Big news for the City of Pascagoula and for the Gulf Coast as the world’s largest producer of wood pellets broke ground at the Port of Pascagoula Thursday.

Soon, hundreds of thousands of tons of wood pellets will be stored in silos at Bayou Casotte. Gov. Phil Bryant joined state and local leaders to help break ground on the new Enviva Biomass export terminal.

“This represents a new day in regional development between Jackson and George counties," said Sen. Bryce Wiggins.

Construction will commence in the next few weeks. The location will be fully transformed in just 15 short months. Ninety thousand tons of wood pellets will be shipped to Bayou Casotte and stored before being loaded on barges and shipped to markets in Asia and Europe.

“You’re going to see a large center here, actually two, that will be for storage and distribution,” Bryant said.

With the construction of a terminal, Enviva and the Port Authority are also rerouting traffic at dozens of railroads throughout Pascagoula and Moss Point. Those rail cars will travel from the manufacturing plant in Lucedale to Pascagoula.

“It’ll be about 125, 150 jobs involved in this,” the governor added.

Those jobs will first come in the form of construction and engineering work. Once the port terminal is complete, 30 full-time employees will travel there every single day.

“About a $90 million investment by Enviva, but this is clean energy that will be shipped all over the world from right here in Jackson County,” Bryant said.

The terminal in Pascagoula will be built simultaneously with the plant in Lucedale.

There are a couple of jobs currently listed for Enviva in Pascagoula and Lucedale. Click here to visit Enviva’s career page.

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