Mohegan — After diving into the wood-pellet business with the purchase earlier this year of an Ohio production plant, Northeast Wood Products LLC, a Mohegan Tribe subsidiary, announced Monday it has completed its purchase of a second plant and expects to acquire a third within a week or two.

Once they’re all up and running, the three plants are expected to produce 250,000 tons of pellets annually, an output that would put Northeast in the top 10 percent of wood-pellet producers in the United States, according to Guy Mozzicato, Northeast’s president.

“We have expectations far beyond that,” Mozzicato said in a phone interview from Northeast’s business development office in Florida.

The company’s other offices are located on the Mohegan reservation.

In May, the casino-owning Mohegans, seeking to diversify their business portfolio, announced Northeast’s formation. At that point, Northeast had acquired a Pennington Seed Co. plant in Peebles, Ohio, as well as the equipment and assets of a Pennington facility in Kenbridge, Va. It also had reached an agreement to acquire a Pennington plant in Ligonier, Ind.

In addition to completing the purchase of the Indiana plant, Northeast has now acquired the equipment and assets of Tennessee Hardwood Pellets of Kenton, Tenn., and will move them to an as-yet-unnamed facility it has yet to officially acquire, the company said in a news release.

Both the Ohio and Indiana plants had been idle prior to Northeast’s acquiring them.

The Ohio plant is now operating, producing pellets at the rate of about 65,000 tons a year. The Indiana plant will have the same capacity when it starts up next month, Mozzicato said. Northeast’s third plant should begin production in several months, nearly doubling the company’s capacity, he said.

Northeast’s plants convert wood fiber from sawmill waste and untreated residues from the wood processing industry into pellets used as a heating fuel in both household and industrial markets.

Northeast’s pellets are sold under the trade name ThermaGlo.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck