1. Introduction
- Vietnam has become the second largest exporter of wood pellets in the world. This item is currently one of the most important exports of the wood industry. According to the General Department of Customs, in 2021, the volume of wood pellets exported from Vietnam reached 3.5 million tons with a turnover of more than 413 million USD.
- In 2022, the volume and export turnover increased sharply. In the first 6 months of 2022, the export volume reached nearly 2.4 million tons with a turnover of 354 million USD. If the current growth rate is maintained, the export turnover in the whole year of 2022 could reach around 700 million USD. In the future, wood pellets have the potential to enter the group of agricultural and forestry export products with an export turnover of over 1 billion USD.
2. Raw material sources for wood pellets
The main sources of raw materials for wood pellets are waste and by-products of domestic and imported wood.
2.1. Raw material sources from domestic forests
- One of the most important sources of raw wood input for wood pellets – This source includes small wood, mainly branches, tops, wood chips, and corn husks. These are by-products from sawmills, peeling boards, and chip mills (for unqualified wood chips, for example, chips with a high bark content that do not meet the standards for making paper chips). This source of waste and by-products is abundant in the Northern region, where there are many sawmill systems, peeling boards, and chip mills. In some areas of the Central Coast, where the sawmill system is not developed but mainly consists of wood chip factories, the input wood for wood pellets is mainly unqualified branches, tops, and chips, and some input wood sources compete with chips.
- Information shared by a number of wood pellet manufacturing and exporting companies shows that raw materials for wood pellets from domestic plantation forests account for over 90% of the total supply of raw materials for wood pellets today.
2.2. Source of wood shavings, sawdust, and wood chips from imported wood
- As one of the important sources of input wood for wood pellets – Currently, this source accounts for less than 10% of the total supply of raw wood for the entire wood pellet industry. Wood shavings, sawdust, and wood chips from imported wood are mainly by-products from sawmills and wood processing factories in the Southeast region, where there are export wood processing centers with limited domestic plantation areas. Although there is a quantity of domestic plantation wood in the Central and Northern regions used by businesses in these processing centers, high transportation costs make the price of domestic plantation wood materials uncompetitive with imported wood. This means that the input materials for these processing centers as well as the by-products from the processing facilities here are from imported wood.
- According to unofficial statistics, Vietnam currently has about 300 wood pellet production facilities, with about 70-80% concentrated in the southern regions where the processing centers are located and in the Central Coast region.
2.3. Other sources
- The raw materials for producing mixed wood pellets are mainly by-products of the wood processing industry. Due to the lack of strict requirements on the quality of raw materials like the wood chip industry, some wood pellet production facilities in the Central region use a part of mixed wood exploited from some natural forest areas. This occurs in the context of high prices for raw materials from planted forests and wood pellet enterprises are having to compete fiercely with chip enterprises for input materials. There is currently no information on the specific locations and scale of raw materials for wood pellets originating from these natural forest areas. However, the signals require the industry to pay attention to limit and eliminate risks related to the risks affecting natural forest resources.
Note: The information in this article is for reference only and may change depending on the manufacturer and source of raw materials. For the most accurate information, you should consult experts, wood pellet suppliers or contact Overc.vn to answer your questions and problems related to wood pellets and wood chips.
Source:
- Goviet org
- Overc Team synthesise, analyse and write articles.
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OVERC was established in Vietnam, which has 17 FTA (Free Trade Agreement).
Vietnam is one of the countries with the most FTAs in the world.
Our main activities are manufacturing and distributing Wood Pellets and Wood Waste. Our wood pellet products, which are made from Acacia veneer residual 100% or wood waste (logs, sawdust, wood chips, wood shavings,…), have been exported to many countries around the world such as Japan, Korea, EU, etc.
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