Why are the public anti-softwood?

[County4x4]

There is another way of looking at this of course, and that's the possibility that customers may not return to buy another load of soft briquettes, so while the product price may not be much different, the number of retained customers could justify the better machinery?

 

I've trialled briquettes made in an adapted waste paper briquetter that was originally designed for compacting scrap bank notes. They looked okay but were pretty soft in comparison, burned very quickly and left a pile of sawdust in the bottom of every bag. A 15kg sack would be lucky to last an evening. Yeah - nice idea to utilise the waste - but I never bought any to sell and wouldn't use them again, or recommend them to anyone else.

 

The ones I sell now aren't even sealed in a bag - they don't need to be as there's no shovelful of waste and dust to contain. Being so hard they last much longer and a 10 kilo bag (not 15kg) will last more than one evening in the Squirrel. This makes them cheaper in real terms than the poorer quality competition

 

As John pointed out there is not a huge difference in price across the different makes. There is however, a huge difference in quality. My briquettes are not the cheapest, or the most expensive, but they are better quality than most, and far better than some. It's quality that gets a customer to come back to you next time.

 

If my supplier can sell them at a reasonable price given that he is operating in the UK with the far higher production cost which that entails, and given that his repeat sales have increased hugely then the investment would seem to be justified. Some of the guys selling at a slightly lower price are barely scraping by, and are praying that diesel costs don't go up, as the increased cost of trucking them from Eastern Europe would eat up what little profit they are making.

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

[gensetsteve]

There is a plant in Andover making brikettes . The plant is about the size of departures at Gatwick. 7 miles down the road another same size taking in a 1000 tonnes a day. If you are thinking of making this stuff in your shed a year or so time the competition may be a problem. I have tried to sell a few different types and so far my beech logs still out sell the camel dung about 100 to one. I would love to sell the stuff that looks like poo and drop the logs as it is more profitable and no work. Always keen to try a sample

[renewablejohn]

Firewood man

 

The production of briquettes with a SPM machine is similar to the method used to produce small conventional straw bales whereas the hydraulic piston is like using a log splitter and a bean can to produce a log.

 

Apart from price the main advantage of the hydraulic press system from my point of view is that the briquettes produced due to there shape can be used in gasification plants without any further processing whereas the SPM briquettes need to be cut to length. Sounds trivial but if your using 10,000 tonnes per annum it becomes important.

[firewoodman]

Firewood man

 

The production of briquettes with a SPM machine is similar to the method used to produce small conventional straw bales whereas the hydraulic piston is like using a log splitter and a bean can to produce a log.

 

Apart from price the main advantage of the hydraulic press system from my point of view is that the briquettes produced due to there shape can be used in gasification plants without any further processing whereas the SPM briquettes need to be cut to length. Sounds trivial but if your using 10,000 tonnes per annum it becomes important.

 

thanks mate, very helpful

 

what does SPM mean, and what type of machine would treenergy use to make thiers?

 

how many different types are out there, and what is a rough price?

 

have watched many on youtube, including sawdust driers.

 

did you have any success using your heizohack to get fines to use in briquettes?

[County4x4]

I priced up an Indian built piston machine along the lines of the SPM machines that John mentioned a few years back, and that would have come in around the £40k mark not including shipping, duty and so on, and which would have involved a couple of containers for the whole set up. The company also send a couple of their engineers over to commission the thing, and you have to provide them with accomodation, and, I quote, "clean drinking water"! Rather than cutting to a precise length, the briquettes are generally snapped off the end of the continuous "sausage" the machine produces, either by running it into an angled plate, or having some mechanism to simply knock the end off every so many seconds.

 

Treenergy briquettes are produced using a screw extruder machine, where a tapered screw forces the material through a die - the hole down the middle is what the end of the screw leaves behind. In the third world, where material like rice husk is often used as a feedstock, plants have welders repairing these screws full time. The high silica content of the rice husk can wear them out in an hour or so of production!

 

Briquettes from a piston machine tend to look like a bunch of discs stuck together - and these often expand when burning. They also tend to fall to bits if disturbed or if more briquettes are added on top. Screw extruded briquettes like Treenergy's keep their shape until completely burned away and are generally denser than most other types. 1 tonne of mine occupies only 0.9 cubic metres- and due to the shape they are much easier to stack than the cylindrical ones in sacks.

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

Edited July 28, 2010 by County4x4

[csservices]

I bought some briquettes last year after having the log burner installed as I hadnt got any seasoned wood, they do burn well but I only used a couple to get light it and get the heat in the bottom of the fire as at £7 a bag its an expensive way to keep warm and my log burner will happily eat its way through a bag a night if the winds in the right direction

[County4x4]

£7 a bag is expensive mate - I sell at £4.50 max for very small orders, £4 if you collect from me yourself, and the price comes down a load more if you have a pallet full off me.

 

Andy

[firewoodman]

so what type do you sell then andy??

[County4x4]

Treenergy all the way mate - I've tried most of the "big players" over the years, and I reckon these are the best.

 

Andy

[csservices]

£7 a bag is expensive mate - I sell at £4.50 max for very small orders, £4 if you collect from me yourself, and the price comes down a load more if you have a pallet full off me.

 

Andy

 

I'm sorted now had a customer who wanted one of his stables emptying in return for cutting him some of it up I've got enough five year seasoned dry stored beech to keep me going for a couple of years