Posted on 5:01pm Monday 23rd Sep 2013
As many of our existing customers will already know, all the wood pellets supplied by Liverpool Wood Pellets are the Enplus A1 grade ‘Balcas Brites’ brand which are supplied to us by Balcas, who are the largest supplier of wood pellets in the UK and Ireland. This includes the 15kg bags we sell in ‘LWP’ packaging which are delivered to us in bulk from Balcas and bagged here at our factory in Liverpool. We love Balcas Brites pellets! We get sent samples of other pellets every month from other UK, European and International wood pellet producers looking to secure our business but we’ve never found another pellet which stands up to comparison with Balcas Brites pellets when tested.
Maintaining the same consistently high quality of pellets is something that has always been vitally important to our business, particularly as our sister company Tundra Wood Heating Systems supplies advanced biomass boilers. Like all biomass boilers one of the most important factors to ensure trouble free use and low maintenance is the quality of the fuel used. Using sub-standard fuel can result in a build up of incombustible material (known as clinker) and eventual breakdown. Tundra have seen such problems with boilers where the owners didn’t use Liverpool Wood Pellets for fuel supply, but in almost six years of operation we’ve never had a single problem caused by our Balcas Brites wood pellets and with regular QC testing we can state categorically that we never will. This is something which we are incredibly proud of and explains why we love our Balcas Brites pellets. You should too. Even if you’re using them for horse bedding rather than biomass fuel the same high quality principles still apply – the wood pellets are triple dust extracted and contain absolutely no additives....
Ok, now here’s the ‘But’. Having such high standards for quality wood pellet supply can cause problems during the winter when demand is at its highest as there are only so many bulk tipper vehicles which Balcas can physically load and send to us by road from their sawmill plant in Invergordon, Scotland. Some other wood pellet suppliers get round this problem by importing some or all of their supplies from overseas which can potentially result in lower quality wood pellets. We were determined not to have to resort to this ourselves this winter and so put big plans into action earlier in the year which are just coming to fruition now :
Last week saw the arrival of our first dedicated sea freight shipment of wood pellets from Balcas in Scotland. Over 2,500 tonnes of pellets arrived in one fell swoop and were moved into local storage near Liverpool docks. More boat loads of wood pellets are also scheduled to arrive later this year and beyond to ensure that we always have enough to fulfil demand. |
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| Liverpool Wood Pellet's fleet down on the docks last week as our first sea shipment arrived. Rain delayed unloading for a few hours before we were up and running moving over 2,500 tonnes of pellets into local storage. |
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| At a glance it may seem overkill to ferry wood pellets down from Scotland to northern England by boat but consider this: To transport the same amount of pellets by road as we received on our first sea shipment would have required almost 100 full loads of bulk tippers. These are specialised vehicles designed to carry the wood pellets without damage and there simply weren’t enough vehicles available to 100% guarantee we would be able to get enough wood pellets into our warehouse to keep up with demand this winter. By changing the bulk of our pellets to sea shipment we have ensured that we have enough premium quality wood pellets to supply all our customers old and new this winter, ensured that we have enough back up stock available no matter how cold it gets this winter, and also massively reduced our carbon footprint. We have estimated the total CO2 emissions for a sea shipment to be less than a third of the equivalent round trip for all the bulk tippers which would be needed instead. |
