The number of Ukrainian wood pellet producers increased by 2 times for 2011-2012
For the time being wood pellets are not very popular in Ukraine, yet due to the increased supplies to the world market, more and more Ukrainian producers of this energy source appear annually. According to experts’ opinion, many investors are interested to invest in this business. Wood pellet production is quite profitable, thus the companies, which have the access to raw material bases create new plants. It is rather difficult to organize the production of pellets as a separate direction. Therefore, it makes sense to install sawmills for supplying plants with the necessary raw materials, moreover, this will reduce the cost of the finished production.
According to the database of wood pellet producers and suppliers, prepared by the Ukrainian Biofuel Portal, in 2012 there were registered 44 producer of such fuel on resource pelleta.com.ua. This figure is almost twice more than the same indicator of the previous year. This growth can be explained by a significant increase in demand for wood pellets in Europe and in other countries. The analysis of the presented base lets see that most pellet plants in Ukraine are concentrated in such regions as Donetskaya, Zhitomirskaya and Kievskaya. The total potential of Ukrainian producers is about 25 000 tons per month.
To date, the main countries-importers of Ukrainian wood pellets are Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Austria. This fuel is usually purchased for heating homes, cottages and sometimes organizations. Pellets are mainly exported to the West by big production companies or suppliers who buy this fuel directly from producers.
According to the experts opinion, today it is very difficult to enter the EU market without having a high quality production. European countries have already formulated their demands and presented them in new standards, thus the pellets were divided into industrial and household types. Now all producers have to sort their granules according to the ash volume obtained during burning. If we analyze the base of wood pellet producers and suppliers provided by the Biofuel Portal, we will see that 70% of producers offer the production with ash content less than 1%, 20% of companies offer the pellets with 2-1% of ash content.
That’s true, today the requirements for pellet quality on the world market are pretty tough. At the same time, the demand for this fuel permanently grows. For example, in Europe over the past few years the consumption of wood pellets reached 10 millions a year. Thus, it is quite obvious, that such a high level of the world demand motivates Ukrainian businessmen to open new pellet plants, improve their production technologies and product quality as well as to expand the geography of sales.
