Poor quality hindering exports of waste wood

Wood recyclers in the UK need to invest more on improving the quality of their products, according to a major importer of UK recovered waste wood to Sweden.

The call for quality improvement has come from Leopold Malmqvist, recycled wood purchaser of Swedens EFO fuel procurement firm, who has been backed by both UK expert Andy Hill and export specialist Oliver Latter.

Mr. Malmqvist told letsrecycle.com that there was consistent demand for good quality wood for use as a fuel in Sweden and that large boilers there operated almost all year round, usually only stopping June and July. And, he emphasised that the severity of the winter weather would have little impact on demand.

The big factor, he said, was the low and inconsistent quality of much UK waste wood which was the major reason for limited interest from Swedish buyers, adding that EFO could double the 250,000 tonnes of recovered waste wood (RWW) it imports for use in CHP plants in Sweden in year if the quality of UK material improved.

Mr. Malmqvist said the situation was not helped by certain un-serious-minded entrepreneurs who did not always operate professionally and undermined others in the market place.

EFO is based in Stockholm and is owned by eight Swedish municipal energy concerns operating CHP and heating plants. In total, the company purchases around 700,000 tonnes of recycled waste wood a year. The company has its own fuel specification which allows for 40% panelboard material but places limits on chlorine and heavy metals such as lead.

Mr. Malmqvist said: The lack of quality of the recycled waste wood from the UK as well as variable quality is the major reason for limited interest from the buyers, at least in Sweden.

My belief is that wood recycling in the UK is too focused on gate fees.Wood recyclershave been too gate fee orientated, not understanding the impact of the whole supply chain and they want to collect the gate fee but dont want to spend money on processing and on ensuring the customer is satisfied. There is quite low investment.

In Sweden, he explained, the waste wood is used as a base material for generation of energy by biofuel combustion plants and spikes in demand are met by other sources. He said these could impact in the future on demand but for now quality wood is being sought.

He noted that other electricity supply sources are an important factor for providing heating out of season. One of these is hydropower but he said of greater significance is the the Swedish nuclear sector, competing with low priced electricity, a challenge for the biofuel combustion, especially in the summer.

SITA UK

Commenting on the views of Mr Malmqvist, Andy Hill, head of organics and alternative fuels at SITA UK, said he wholeheartedly agreed that wood recyclers in the UK needed to drive up quality.
SITA UK is a supplier of recycled waste wood to EFO and exports from four ports: Kings Lynn, Ridham, Brightlingsea and Southampton. The company loads two to four boats with material a week at the height of the season.

He said: From day one SITA has been clear that our guiding principle is to produce the best quality fuel we can, as it not only provides us with a fair price but also gives us longer term supply security in the market. We have worked very closely with our clients to meet their fuel specification and focus on continuous improvement.

EFO comes to the UK quite regularly and visits all our sites and ports. It is about reviewing and understanding the whole supply chain and we genuinely work in partnership. For instance, they see a lot of other fuel supply companies across Europe and share best practice with us.

Mr Hill added that the waste wood market was increasingly becoming more of a European market rather than just a UK market and that recyclers faced increasing competition from other countries.

Boomeco

Oliver Latter, managing director of Gloucestershire-based recovered waste wood exporter Boomeco, which also supplies EFO, said that a few UK wood recyclers had caught a cold in 2012 because they had attempted to export inconsistent quality material.

He said: We have been exporting recovered wood for five years and have a lot of experience. A lot of people thought you could just buy a shredder and export the material. The wood that we are recycling is not a consistent product it can contain heavy metals, plastics etc. That is what the Swedish have struggled with, the quality.

Mr Latter explained that while the main markets for recovered wood in the UK are particleboard and biomass, there was no particleboard industry in Sweden so whereas our grade A and B goes to particleboard theirs goes to fuel so they are used to a higher quality.

He said that Boomeco had invested heavily in state-of-the-art equipment to process waste wood and that material was shredded and screened with all metal removed.

A lot of the machinery in the wood recycling industry has come out of the aggregates industry and is not big enough. You really need specialist equipment. Our screen at Avonmouth is the biggest screen in the UK had been build for us.

Everyone has magnets on the end of shredders and they do not remove 100% of the metal. Only a handful of companies have non-ferrous separators and even those will not take out stainless steel. All of that fuses together with the ash and causes enormous amount of grief. We take out every ounce of metal. Also controlling the moisture content is important.