The world volume of pellet production exceeds 15 million tons per year and continues to grow. Wherein the volume of consumption exceeds the production and many countries are forced to resort to imports.
The European Union countries are the largest wood pellet importers and use this type of wood biofuel for heat and power production on an industrial scale, and for heating private households as well. In such countries as Poland, Denmark and Sweden it is common to burn pellets together with coal at the power plants. Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are the largest consumers among the European countries, consuming about 8 million tons of pellets annually. This is due to the strict EU guidelines prescribing to achieve 20% of alternative energy by 2020.
According to the market operator forecasts, by 2020 the annual pellet demand of the European market will range from 80 to 135 million tons, and pellet consumption will be structured as follows:
Power generation: 60% of the total volume
Heating in commercial and residential buildings by utilities: 25% of the total volume
Consumption of private households: 15% of the total volume.
The rapid increase in the wood pellet consumption has led to a shortage of raw materials, as the continuing world economic crisis naturally affected the timber industry, which waste was used by wood pellet manufacturers, and manufacturers of paper products and wood chipboard as well. As a consequence, the world pellet price began to rise, causing a natural increase in the number of Ukrainian pellet exporters, which until recently did not find good domestic demand. This fact is reflected inthe database of Ukrainian exporters for 2014. According to the database there were 246 companies in Ukraine, what was twice more than in 2012-2013.
Sergei Kozlov, the expert of Ukrainian Biofuel Portal pellets-woodcom.ua, said that it is early to talk about a qualitative increase in the number of exporters and in the near future weak companies will give their market share to large providers having either their own production facilities or established contacts with the Ukrainian producers and European importers.
Author: Ivan Prokhorov
