New technology developed by Bandit Industries for its Beast horizontal grinders may change the way that we process material for biomass power plants and pellet plants. In 2007, Bandit Industries developed a chipping option for its Beast Recyclers enabling Beast owners to quickly convert the machine from a grinder to a whole tree chipper. Bandit has refined the chipping option, allowing the Beast to effectively produce a 1/4"-minus sawdust-like chip, a conventional chip size of 3/4"-minus, or any size in between. When producing a sawdust-type product, the chipping operation generally yields better than 95% acceptable material (¼" minus) in one pass. Because the Beast chipping system uses a cutting action, as opposed the beating action used in hogs and hammermills, far less energy is consumed in producing the fine material. The wood fibers are cut, not fractured. Pellet operations report that this type of material packs much more efficiently into the pellet dies, yielding greater production.