During a world bioenergy conference in Sweden this past May, publisher Scott Jamieson of Annex Publishing & Printing conceived the idea for Canadian Biomass, a quarterly magazine for Canadian forest industry professionals that covers the emerging bioenergy market and energy industry. The 32-page debut issue came out this month; the next one will appear in December. “Bioenergy is a huge part of their mix in Scandinavia. They are like 20 years ahead of us. When I saw the amount of information available to people in the industry, it was clear that we had that void here.”

 “There are practical pieces on how you collect and process wood residue featuring hands-on equipment, a variety of opinion pieces by people in this sector, market trends reports such as the use of wood pellets in Canada and the U.S., world news coverage on what other people are doing, people who are far ahead of us. For example, a report on the conference,” says Jamieson.

The standard-sized glossy has a circulation of 21,000. Canadian Biomass is for now distributed as a supplement with two of Annex’s forestry books–Canadian Forest Industries and Canadian Wood Products.

Companies such as Wellons Canada, which makes co-generation plants and energy plants, Bandit Industries, Combustion Expert and a variety of European and Scandinavian advertisers helped get the first issue off the ground. “In the future we will have to do something about [staff]. We are leveraging existing assets in terms of sales and editorial,” says Jamieson, who launched the publication alongside production manager Josee Crevier and production artist Brooke Shaw. Veteran forestry publishers and former owners Tim Tolton and Guy Fortin handled ad sales. The cost of a one-time, full page, colour ad is $4,470.