Balcas demand distorting firewood prices?

[Quickthorn]

what i want to know is why balcas get a subsidy to run wood for miles and miles, burn it to turn it into electricity then sell the electricity to power domestic heaters when i can cut out most of the inbetween stages by selling firewood directly into the customers grate! worst of all they are charging me for the priviledge via my electricity bill.

 

 

This is the thing that angers me. I'm not sure about how ROCs work, but the feed in tariffs are definitely subsidised or paid for by a surcharge on electricity bills.

 

I couldn't think of a more regressive way to do this - so typical of the UK these days. Get the poor to subsidise those rich enough to invest in this sort of technology.

 

I'd be interested to know how much money could be saved by scrapping all these subsidies and (best of all) sacking all the bureaucrats who shuffle all the paper around to make this sort of stuff happen.

[Alycidon]

Govt are committed longterm to ROCs hence the desirability of CHP plants ( combined heat and power) next door to a large pellet plant. What gets sold in the market gets sold, what does not gets burnt and provides energy fed into the national grid for payment per kw and DOUBLE rocs as the power is produced using renewable products. Balcas do in fact control the UK market owing to their size.

 

Demand for firewood will continue to rise significantly year on year, the energy companies have been given permission to increase their prices by 50% over the next 5 years on top of inflation to cover their development costs of green alternative energy. So gas and electric prices will be double what they are today in 5 years, thats why people are changing.

 

And here is another thought !!, the Germans are switching off the nuclear programme in 2022, the UK will have a large energy gap after 2015, ie we use more that we can make. So how are we going to fuel our power stations etc to produce electricity, our gas supplies are in decline. By using renewable fuels of course, wood, miscanthus, hedge trimmings is one that has yet to be considered but that will come.

 

This next winter a cubic meter of wood needs to rise dramatically. The buy is cost is around £60 a ton for hard + VAT, we process, season, store, deliver + reasonable profit means £120 a cu meter out + VAT in my book this winter. Soft maybe £90 + VAT.

 

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[sandbach-sticks]

I wish i had the balls to charge £120 a cu meter, i wouldn't sell anything. However, as i said on another post kindling has become more profitable for me than logs due to the increase in price of cord wood. I am trying make a living and it is hard while everyone appears to be producing logs and willing to sell them 'cheap' and at a profit?

[DN22 Gardening]

£120 a cube....i can only dream.

 

struggling to get £75 round here.

 

thankfully, i only process and sell my arb arisings and i'm quite happy to stockpile it in the yard.

 

my heart goes out to you firewood only guys, i really don't know how you make it pay.

 

hopefully in two years time when the price of wood goes through the roof, i'll have thousands of cube, all split, dried, and ready for sale

[davetaz]

my hardwood logs are going up in price from 1st September to £110/cubic metre. Told all my customers this and have sold 10 cube at last winters prices (£100/cube) in the last week (partly seasoned). Also had 2 enquiries from people wanting to pre-order and pay now!

[andy26]

As long as the price differential in terms of £/kwh between wood and gas/oil/elec, remains the similar then it should from the aspect of supplying firewood not matter.

 

Yes the price of cord will go it, but then so will the retail price of firewood.

 

As with any business its important to differentiate your product from your competitors.

 

For those who sells unseasoned logs the differentiator will be price.

 

For others it will be the quality.

[sandbach-sticks]

I agree Andy, but unfortunately when the public phone they seldom ask me for anything other than price and quantity. Only a few ask about quality! I have learnt that i need to promote myself more and sell direct, and not to garages and garden centers as i did last year.

[Alycidon]

Talk to your customers about mositure content. Buy a mositure meter and demonstrate your point. The Morso one I and other Morso distributers sell has a green ( OK) yellow ( if you have to ) and red ( on) guide oin the back. All the cheaper end suppliers will be ( with all due respect lads) arb boys looking to offload what they have aquired over the summer, that will by and large be far to wet for immediate optimum results. None that I have spoken to have any idea of mositure contents of their products or what the idea moisture contents should be. If they kept it another year then it would be far more valuable but I would guess that lack of space precludes that. Storage space can be expensive hence higher prices are needed.

 

I have gone into the market from scratch last winter with a very dry product at a mid market price. I wanted to establish a presence in the local market and a reputation for high quality ready to burn wood. That done I can now move the price up and make some money as the customers realise that they get far more heat, better flame patterns and far less soot and tars from dry wood than seasoned.

 

Have a look at the Certainly Wood web site, some of their 'kiln dried' hardwood that was sold last winter I tested at 20-22%. Maybe it got damper once the customer got hold of it though.

 

I have heard of one old lady who complained that her stove would not burn well, the stove retailer ( not me !!) called in the manufacturer whose engineer went to investigate. Turned out the lady kept her wood in a pond in the garden, said it burnt to fast otherwise !!. Tied each bit to a bit of string and tossed them in !!.

 

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