Olive Bars

[baz]

I received the same e-mail from this group and responded with a detailed e-mail centred on how their wholesale pricing was sustainable at £200/1.4m3 ex-dock side. Never received a reply. They have updated their web site this week, latest one doesn't have any contact details which is strange. A professional outfit would have the marketing set before launch which they clearly haven't.

[hedgejumper]

hi Andy, I just wondered how much further you got with the Olive bar product ? I was contacted and met with the delightfull Tessa and tested the sample box provided and was impressed.

However i did not want to commit to a giant container and have since tried to contact the company to see if any one else in Uk has palced an order in the hope of buying 1or2 palletts to try out down here .

would be pleased to hear your comments

[County4x4]

Hello mate,

 

I didn't is the quick answer!

 

I did trial a few boxes here, and thought the heat output was pretty good. However, they are quite ashy, you can smell them if you store them in the house and they are harder to light than wood briquettes. In fairness the guy did mention they needed a lot more draught in a stove than you'd use for wood.

 

Like you - I didn't want to commit to a container load for reasons of cost and storage amongst other things, and of course at the end of the day they're still imported, and though if they move production to Spain they won't be coming as far as some imported briquette fuels, it's still an issue for me. I did notice one Irish website covered in greenwash recently who were importing their stuff from China!! All very eco!

 

So in summary - not a bad product, but for me at least - better used in the home market. I'll be sticking to my UK made wood based briquettes I think.

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

[Pedroski]

Any more updates on olive blocks/bars/logs? A fella down near me is starting up importing them, and reckons he'll do well out of it selling them at £10 for 3 'logs'. I think he'll find it hard.

[openspaceman]

Its just a way of dumping the waste product from there olive oil business into the UK market. You can also do the same with cherry pips. Just dry and put through a briquette press.

 

I was never able to get cherry pips in sufficient quantity but they and olive pips work well as is in a pellet stove.

[County4x4]

I've heard nothing more from them since our initial meeting - so at least they're not being pushy. If the ones going to Sussex are the same, I reckon most customers will struggle a bit using them in a stove - they're not that easy to light, and they tend to need a fairly high draught - more than many stoves will provide. Also, being very ashy, the bottom air inlet on most stoves will be blocked off pretty quickly by the ash they produce. With the best will in the world, I wouldn't recommend them to stove owners. There's also the smell issue - they have quite a musty dirty mouldy sort of niff about them - and if you store them by the fire - you can soon smell them around the house.

 

Andy

[baz]

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

 

I heard from this crowd a year ago and asked some questions and never had any response to the questions I raised. They used to have a web site running but that appears to be down. That doesn't instil a great deal of confidence that it's an organisation going forward and here for the long haul.