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Olive Bars


Treewarrior
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Received this e-mail, then when I contacted these guys they sound serious.

 

Do you think it's a goer?

 

 

 

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

 

 

My name is Tessa and I represent Olivebars. Olivebars is a unique, alternative fuel designed for open fires or multi-fuel stoves in the home. The product is currently not available on the UK market but existing markets prove the product to be highly competitive over all existing products.

 

 

We have determined a representative sample of companies within the UK and with no obligation to your company; we would like to offer you a complimentary sample of our product in order to have your opinion about our product. The product has been tried and tested during the last 2 years in Europe and the Mediterranean and from the proven success we are convinced it could gain a strong foothold in the UK market. We would like to discover the potential for using the product in the UK.

 

 

If you are interested in receiving a sample please contact me and our regional manager Lior Dolphin will visit you with a sample of Olivebars and will answer any questions you have regarding the product.

 

 

 

Please find attached further information about Olivebars.

 

 

 

Tessa Wiggans

 

Regional Manager

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

075 199 393 18

 

OliveBars.co.uk :: Home

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Yeah, they've been on to us too. Great idea if you live in a country that produces olive trees & needs to find a good use for waste wood. But I don't see how bringing it all the way over here is cost effective when we have our own woods to manage & bring back into use. Logs are expensive enough as it is & that's assuming you buy them from the guy down the road who looks after a local woodland. How much do you think it would cost to buy these assuming they're coming from the middle east or the garlic belt? Plus, if we're using solid fuel to save on fossil fuel, sticking these on a container ship & sending them over here hardly seems to fit in with that ethos.

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I've started trialling these already as it happens.

 

There's no wood in them - they're produced from waste from the olive oil industry plus peanut shell. The calorific value is much higher than wood briquettes per kilo according to lab tests.

 

I can see the argument about importers getting rich - however, another way of looking at it is that these guys are making use of a product that has historically been difficult to get rid of and is polluting in landfill. The price is actually much lower than that of some similar non-wood based briquettes made in the UK, which may still be great products, but the price is always going to put them out of most people's budgets. I've had quotes of around £400/ton at trade for some of these. At that level they are only ever going to be a rich persons talking point over dinner, and never a mainstream energy source.

 

As far as their ethics go - I know they've already refused to deal with one MAJOR outfit in the UK because of their trading policies, in spite of being offered a huge commitment to order volume. That didn't strike me as indicating an outfit driven purely by profit to be honest. I also think I'm a pretty good judge of character and not easily taken in by sales patter, and having met these people they seem like a pretty genuine bunch to me. They are also looking at setting up their production in Spain to cut the distance to market.

 

I totally agree with lindisfarnecharcoal's comments about imported charcoal by the way. I sell locally produced charcoal from a couple of guys, and it's streets apart in terms of quality, and produced as a by product of woodland management and ancient coppice restoration. That puts it in a whole different ball park to most of the imported stuff both in terms of background and quality. Personally I won't use briquettes at all, and especially not imported ones due to all the other crap they throw in to make them stick together. I also know for a fact that a fair bit of nasty imported stuff gets re-packaged and re-branded once it's in the UK!

 

The difference with these olivebars is that they're produced from a waste material rather than from destroying anything. They are also diverting waste from landfill in just the same way that our home grown wood based briquettes are. Having said that though - most of the wood briquettes on sale in the UK are imported - mostly from eastern Europe. There are a couple of UK manufacturers - I sell briquettes from one of them - but quite a lot of small outfits too who briquette their own waste wood, often in machines not designed specifically for the job. These briquettes tend to be small and soft and give pretty poor performance in comparison.

 

I also have to say that I think one of the big attractions of properly made briquettes is their consistent performance. Joe Public is generally pretty ignorant when it comes to solid fuels, and there's no getting away from the fact that there's an awful lot of rubbish being sold as firewood these days - though hopefully not by anyone on here. I've tested no end of loads of "seasoned firewood" which has proved to be anything but. As a result - Joe ends up disappointed with his stove, and disillusioned about wood generally. With briquettes, he'll get good results every time due to their very nature - if the feedstock isn't right they just won't work. Also of course, many briquettes offer significantly higher energy values than natural wood.

 

Anyway - just my two penneth. I don't actually work for the olivebars outfit in spite of how it sounds, but I think we need to look at the whole picture here instead of making our minds up and then looking at the full story.

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

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As I said, I'm not knocking the practicality of turning waste into product. Just don't see the need to go dragging half way across a continent to sell it. It makes no sense enviromentaly or finacially. If it's that good, they'll have no problem selling it where it's made. Put it this way, I can't sell enough logs or charcoal, & I would bet most of the other firewood sellers on here would say the same, & that's without exporting our logs or charcoal to the other side of Europe.................

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As I said, I'm not knocking the practicality of turning waste into product. Just don't see the need to go dragging half way across a continent to sell it. It makes no sense enviromentaly or finacially. If it's that good, they'll have no problem selling it where it's made. Put it this way, I can't sell enough logs or charcoal, & I would bet most of the other firewood sellers on here would say the same, & that's without exporting our logs or charcoal to the other side of Europe.................

 

Makes no sense to me carting fuel around the world when we are supposed to be saving energy.

 

Are these olive bars just recycled olives as pure olive briquettes normally break up. Most olive bars are blended with waste paper pulp to produce a stronger briquette and would need a Waste Incineration Directive approved appliance to burn them in. Certainly would be illegal to burn them on any domestic stove as there not WID compliant.

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Makes no sense to me carting fuel around the world when we are supposed to be saving energy.

 

Are these olive bars just recycled olives as pure olive briquettes normally break up. Most olive bars are blended with waste paper pulp to produce a stronger briquette and would need a Waste Incineration Directive approved appliance to burn them in. Certainly would be illegal to burn them on any domestic stove as there not WID compliant.

 

I asked the oilve bar a few questions about their product as to if it were wood based, had olive oil in or what have you glue, parafin etc. What tax bracket it fell under, how the justified the lengthy transportation & so on as a "friendly product". They didn't know & I'm still waiting for them to find out, any day now they tell me! So Renewable John, we're agreed, it's not for us :)

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