Manufacturing Process

We pride ourselves on the careful manufacturing processes for our pellets and shavings. We follow exacting standards to ensure that we are producing the highest quality products. Here are some of the things we do to achieve and maintain our high standards.

Pellet Manufacturing

It all starts with the raw material we use to make our pellets. The sawdust we purchase has to be a specific species of pine and/or spruce wood. Our sawdust only comes from sawmills where the bark has been removed from the trees. This helps ensure that there will be no contaminants in our pellets, just 100% softwood. Other pellet manufacturers use whatever wood they can get. This will often result in a lower quality pellet.

We never expose our sawdust to the weather. Our sawdust is always protected from the elements which helps ensure that it is never compromised by contaminates from the outside environment (dirt, rocks, etc.)

Our sawdust is taken directly from enclosed storage bins at the sawmills and delivered to us in covered trucks that dump the sawdust right into our building.

The next steps involve getting the sawdust to the right condition. Before we make pellets the sawdust has to be dried to a precise moisture content. Then the material is ground down to fine particles before being pelletized. As an added precaution high intensity magnets are in place along the manufacturing line to remove any potential metal contaminants.

We use two Andritz Sprout 400 horsepower ring die pellet presses. Our pellet dies are made to our detailed specifications. See here for a picture of a pellet die. The sawdust is pressed into the holes of the pellet die under extreme high pressure. The pressure creates heat that releases natural glue in the wood called lignen. This natural glue flows around the wood fibers and causes the wood to bind together. The high pressure also ensures a compact and dense pellet.

As the wood pellets are pushed out of the die they are cut off to ensure that the pellet length is within Super Premium specifications. At this point in the process the pellets are fully formed, hot and moist, and still quite soft. The heat and moisture is removed in our specially modified cooling equipment. Once cooled the pellets become hard and durable.

The pellets are then passed across two different screens to remove any under or over sized pellets and also any excess dust. Just before bagging, the pellets are vacuumed to remove any remaining sawdust. Our bagging system is fully automated giving us a fine quality finish to our packaging.

Our stacking process is semi automated. We have highly trained employees handle and examine every bag that we produce. If a bag of pellets doesn’t meet our quality control specifications, it will be rejected at this final phase in production. We could have automated this stage, but we strongly feel that strict, humanized quality control is important at this point in the process.

Once the pellet bags are stacked on the pallet (anywhere from 50 to 75 bags per pallet) we use an automated stretch wrapper to put a tight wrap around the pellet bags from top to bottom. A heavy gauge plastic all-weather cover is put over the entire package and then it is fully stretch wrapped again. This keeps everything in place during shipment, whether across the continent or across the ocean. The all-weather cover protects the pellets even when stored outside for long periods.

Shavings Manufacturing

We are very selective of the shavings that we sell to our customers. Stallion Bedding shavings have to be white, fluffy, medium size and very absorbent. All of our shavings come from sawmills where they have been kiln dried. Our shavings only come from white pine or spruce.

In our process, we first examine the load of shavings that’s been delivered to our facility. If the load doesn’t meet our high quality standards for our Stallion Bedding Shavings, we don’t use it. Instead it is directed to our pellet manufacturing division.

Once selected, the load of shavings is slowly passed across a series of screens to remove all unwanted sizes and sawdust. In addition, the shavings are vacuumed to remove any remaining sawdust so that the shavings you receive are virtually dust free. In this way, the end result is a consistent product that meets our rigorous standards.

We use specially modified equipment to compress the shavings into 3 cubic foot bales for easy handling and distribution. Our shavings bales are then hand stacked on pallets. Our pallet configuration allows for a 53’ trailer to be fully loaded so as to provide the lowest possible freight cost per cubic foot. We put an all weather cap on each stack of bales and then shrink wrap the entire package from top to bottom.

Each bale of our Stallion Shavings weighs approximately 30 pounds. When the bale is opened and decompressed, the shavings expand to cover an area of 12 cubic feet.

Our Stallion Bedding shavings are manufactured with stringent quality control guidelines resulting in a year round consistent supply that never changes.