Soil refinery company provides look into its future production in Renovo
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KEVIN RAUCH/FOR THE EXPRESS
Ghana Ambassador to the United States Victor Smith, center, visited the Renovo site. He said that his country is quite interested in the work to be done at the Renovo lab, as Anesidora principal investors Ben Gardner, left, and Ron Kink explain some of the process.
RENOVO -- Anesidora Enterprises welcomed potential investors as well as local and county officials to Renovo.
The company, which is aiming to open its central lab for hybrid smelting and mineral processing, purchased the former W.T. Storey building on the west end of the town.
Company leaders made it quite clear that the hard work and effort by local political leaders and business-people have helped them to establish their business in Renovo. In the next six months this will become an established business and provide the biggest boom that the borough's economy has seen in decades.
The main principals of Anesidora are former Congressman Ron Klink, Jim Hawk and Ben Gardner. Each described that they found exactly what they were looking for in the 50,000 square foot building setting just off state Route 120.
The building's location is next to railroad tracks so that mine waste and fly ash can be brought by railcar. The men stated the location is good as a hub for their business and an economic driver for Renovo and Clinton County.
"Like I have said before, one of our top priorities will be to employ Renovo people where we can," Hawk, founder and chief executive, said to those gathered in the building.
The group offered a hands on display of what their hybrid smelting and mineral process facility can do with mine waste material. One pile of rocks in particular was a common site around Renovo, stones containing iron and other materials that cause acid mine drainage with their orange, powdery like look.
Anesidora envisions 30-40 good paying jobs with the vast majority of them being able to be filled with hires off of the street, to be trained to learn, enabling the possibility of Renovo employment.
The plans call for a world class certified laboratory to be housed in the building, permanently. Finding a lab that could test the materials in a cost effective and timely fashion has been impossible.
"The material will be initially pre-processed, and that could happen at the coal mine or wherever the pile is, and we beneficiate the material. Basically what we are doing is concentrating," explained Klink. In addition to being a principal investor in Anesidora, Klink served as a U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania's 4th District from 1993 to 2001.
"Only about 20 percent of the material is coming here to begin to be processed to where the metals are distinguishable and then we would sell them in bulk to the final user, who would then process how they need it," Klink continued. "Whether they're making computer chips they would do one way, or they're making aeronautic parts they would do it a different way."
"We would then sell larger bulk amounts of material at lower costs," he continued.
Klink offered that another, more lucrative aspect of what could eventually be done in Renovo would be to take target metals and Rare Earth Elements could be processed to their pure form. That would be refined and sold on the commodities market at market value.
As the Anesidora representatives were explaining their operations, Hawk said that the "material that we are working with will tell us what to do."
Hawk offered as an example that some of the by-products of the processing would be silica, or sand, some would be the iron that caused the reddish orange mine water discharge and some could be used as soil conditioner in the agriculture industry.
Hawk said that the company has letters of support from PA Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick as well as Representative Glenn GT Thompson, while Renovo Council has welcomed the opportunity with open arms.
Attending the open house, which was by invitation, included: BusinessPA, Clinton County Economic Partnership President Louis Anastos, Kyle Peters and Dave Harger, Kyle Stewart, Evan Hillyer, Ben Franklin Technology Partners and council president John Simon among others.
A unique guest came by way of Ghana, as Ambassador to the United States Victor Smith and Minister-Counselor Mickson Opoku were at the Renovo plant representing just how cutting edge that Anesidora's work in Renovo will become.
Ambassador Smith explained that Ghana has an abundance of gold in polluted soil, water and stone and has struggled with such contamination for many years.
In fact, many thousands of Ghana residents have been made sick by the massive contamination. The fact that Anesidora's work could assist them in not just cleaning the environment but also enable them to refine additional gold and other precious metals, piqued their interest enough to make the drive from Washington, DC to Renovo.
In one of the heaviest statements of the day, Hawk stressed that Renovo will be the company's global lab, even if they end up working in Africa or anywhere else on earth, the lab in Renovo is slated to become the centerpiece.