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Record Comments posted by Big J
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On 07/05/2019 at 12:58, Aspen@AAOIL said:
Hi Big J,
No doubt you use much more fuel in heavy forestry work. For this reason, using alkylate fuels is even more important as your workers will be getting the highest exposure of harmful emissions during their day to day work. As an employer you have a duty of care to look after them.
The original founder of Aspen came up with the idea of creating a cleaner fuel for chainsaws after reading a report on the harsh working conditions of forestry workers in Sweden which was linked to a much higher risk of cancer due to the emissions they breathed in on a daily basis.
I'm not posting to troll, but I'm trying to figure out when your fuel is so very much more expensive than forecourt petrol.
So £0.58 of every litre of petrol goes to the exchequer in the form of fuel duty. Then there is also 20% VAT which is charged on the base cost and the duty. The base cost of a litre of petrol is around £0.50. The VAT takes it up to about £1.30.
Now a quality 2 stroke oil (like Husqvara XP) is about £10.80/l, so £1.08 per 100ml of oil, and working out at around £0.22 per litre.
So couple that with a base cost of £0.50 for the petrol, you have a cost price, before tax of £0.72 per litre.
The cheapest I can find aspen for is about £2.90 per litre plus VAT, and I'd have to spend almost a thousand pounds up front for 270 litres. I'm not sure what the legality of storing that is either. £0.58 of that is duty, so that means production cost is £2.32, which makes is almost 4 times as expensive before any tax than standard fuel.
Assuming a production cutter is using 7 litres a day, 35 litres a week for about 45 weeks a year, they'd spend around £2500 on normal petrol and over £4500 on Aspen. More frustrating is the disparity in terms of what you're actually charging for it before taxes, where it's 4 times as expensive.
I appreciate that there are extra costs with (relatively) low volume production, packaging and producing a healthier fuel, but how do you justify the 4 fold price hike? Genuinely interested, not trolling. -
When on softwood cutting, my cutters are doing 40 litres a week. Even processing blown hardwoods with winching it's 20 litres a week.
I understand the appeal of Aspen for the occasional user who doesn't want it to go off, but it's a luxury for most full-time professionals.
Win a year's supply of Aspen fuel at the Arb Show 2019
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Posted
Thanks for taking the time to reply in such detail. Very informative. I'm much too tired to say anything meaningful by way of response but just wanted to acknowledge your post.