Biomass wood pellet prices - bagged and bulk

npnight

Dear All

Apologies if I stated something incorrectly. I am new to wood pellet product and industry.
I have been doing various researches on it. And it seems that importing wood pellet from Eastern Europe is cheaper than buying from UK. However of course you need to import in big amounts in order for your transport cost not to be so high. Also need to buy more and more from supplier to get special discounted prices. I guess thats what some companies do bring in bigger volume and than sell to individual clients who buy in range of 0.5 to 3 ton. I wanted to hear your opinion what about if wood pellet brought to UK with all necessary certificates EN and BSL. and rather than spending on marketing and than charging clients
250 pounds or more for the product, its sold at cheaper prices to people before it arrives.
But no payment be done until goods are shipped and proof of shipment provided.
So for example company takes orders lets say in certain area 5 clients each 2 ton, other area 8 clients 1 ton each and so on in total end up having order for 100 ton to 80 clients to 10 areas. Than company calculates all the transport costs. Once it brings wood pellet to port it will loan to various trucks and without storing them will directly send to clients.
By doing so there is no marking cost, no storage cost, no extra loading and unloading cost will make product be cheaper. These is just an idea, would love to hear your opinions on these thought

cancunia

It's an interesting idea to set up some kind of collective to buy biomass, I thought that perhaps MSE would be doing this at some time, in line with the Gas & Electric energy deals that have been brokered.
However, I'm not sure that just a few individuals could bring about the economies of scale needed to make it worth while. White Horse Energy, Luxury Wood Co & Premier Pellets are all currently taking Pellets from Lativia, perhaps others do too.

Thozza & I live near to Grimsby, I seem to recall that someone has set up a bulk storage facility for pellets there? Maybe buying in bulk from the UK would also be a possibility?

cancunia

Just had an email from WHE saying their prices will go up from the end of this month. I tried to paste the table of prices here, but can't get it to format correctly.

npnight

Thank you for reply. It was more idea of many people rather than few individuals.
To make it bigger scale imagine there is map of UK and once people place orders
they will pop up in map so others can see who is having deliver near them. More people order from certain area cheaper delivery will be.
Most companies do bring there wood pellet from various countries however they still have
marketing costs, storage cost and uploading and loading costs. But if product is sold before it hits storage house all these costs could be cut off and could lead to cheaper price to buyers.
It is always hard to gather people to do something they rather pay slightly more than deal with it, therefore certain company could be set up who will do it all. Research find best suppliers, important pellets etc and sell to individuals at lower price.
Regarding prices: various suppliers from Latvia and Russia have confirmed that during
winter they do increase there prices because demand rises. For example Russia has more than Canada and USA combined tree zone that can be turned into wood pellet. But USA and Canada supplies UK 7 times more than what Russia. There is big gap in the market.
its very big task to create such platform that will allow to do everything mentioned above not even speaking about costs of such system and operation.

tangoev

We looked at this forum in the Spring and have now ordered bagged pallets ready for Winter.
LC Energy had an offer on Greenwood pellets for £239 delivered.
Price valid for the next week. http://lcenergy.co.uk/store/

thozza

Just checked a few of the cheaper suppliers, and over the past week prices seem to be creeping up a bit, the cheapest ENplus A1/BSL listed pellets are now around £230-£235/T from Premier Pellets (AKZ), White Horse (Firepower) and Luxury Wood Company (AKZ).

cancunia

I just got an email from RHI asking for my annual declaration. I started looking for BSL numbers and noticed that the BSL number for a given product (Brites for example) seems to be based on the seller as opposed to the manufacturer? Maybe it's a bit too early in the day and I got mixed up, but here's 2 examples:

LC Energy Brites - BSL0034202-0003
LWP Brites - BSL0123426-0002

thozza

cancunia wrote: »

I just got an email from RHI asking for my annual declaration. I started looking for BSL numbers and noticed that the BSL number for a given product (Brites for example) seems to be based on the seller as opposed to the manufacturer? Maybe it's a bit too early in the day and I got mixed up, but here's 2 examples:

LC Energy Brites - BSL0034202-0003
LWP Brites - BSL0123426-0002

The BSL scheme seems to be another overly complex bureaucratic government scheme and therefore it has run into a few problems.

It is as you say, based on the listing number of the supplier, not the manufacturer, so if you use more than one supplier then each has its own number, one for each product sold...what a nightmare.

I have spoken to 3 suppliers who, despite applying for their numbers some time ago (they are all just selling EN A1 Plus bagged product), had still not received their certification. Looks like DECC completely underestimated the amount of work required to vet all the applicants.

On Tuesday this notice appeared on the BSL site:

06.10.15 - UPDATE FOR TRADERS: To support fuel quality, the BSL Administrator and the UK Pellet Council have reached an agreement that non-certified ENplus Traders selling sealed bagged pellets they have procured from an ENplus certified supplier can now be listed as a Trader of ENPlus fuel on the BSL. Eligible Traders can now include the ENplus number on their applications and can be shown as having the fuel quality standard on the BSL find a fuel website, once verified through the UK Pellet Council website or the ENplus website.

Why did it take until the day of launch for them to do the straightforward thing and give traders of EN A1 Plus pellets an automatic listing?

The website, with the 'Find A Fuel' is not that useful either, it shows all sorts of alleged stock points, some of which are depots or factories, and it doesn't even give the BSL listing number of the particular stock point. Apparently this is because we are required to quote the BSL number from the invoice, which is not very convenient.

cancunia

I spoke to the Domestic RHI Helpline, the info they gave was that you cannot use fuel that is not BSL registered and claim the RHI even if it's fuel you bought last year. However if that same fuel is now registered with the BSL, you are ok to declare that.
Based on suppliers having the registration as opposed to the fuel, this means that it's the supplier who needs to now be registered with the same fuel that you bought last year so you can declare last year's fuel on your RHI declaration. How daft is that, why not just say anything you buy from the 5th Oct has to be registered?

I emailed Balcas and got a generic BSL number from them for the UK, it's BSL0028407-0001, seems that wholesalers also get registration.

Over complicated, or what.

pokeynokes

FYI..... I got 5% off my first order with White Horse Energy - the code is FloJul9563. Even having to pay an extra £20 for delivery (they're in Scotland & I'm in God's Own Country of Cornwall) they were cheapest. Don't think there's any delivery surcharge if you are unfortunate enough to live in England xxx