March 1, 2016
BY Tim Portz
I spent all of last week in Austria and Italy at two international pellet conferences. My first stop, the European Pellet Conference in Wels, Austria was a return trip for me. I was honored to be asked to moderate a panel examining the public relations challenge the industry faces in countering the misinformation and myths perpetuated in traditional and social media relative to the broader wood pellet segment. Those of you who frequently read this blog know this is subject in which I am growing increasingly interested. I closed out the discussion by asking the panelists if they ever thought we’d reach a point where we had effectively established with a broad cross section of the population an accurate understanding of how our industry works, how it adds value to forest management practices and how it drives geologic carbon out of our energy production portfolio. The answer was a unanimous “no”, but it didn’t seem to really bother anyone on the panel. The thought was this battle came with the territory, came with challenging the established fossil-fuel status quo and I tend to agree.
My second stop was the Progetto Fuoco, an Italian wood heating conference held in Verona. I had heard that to understand the Italian wood heat market, at all, you really needed to experience the event. I’ll be writing more about my experiences at the event for the upcoming issue of Pellet Mill Magazine, but wanted to offer a few quick observations while they were fresh.
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Producers sell pellets and court new distributors at the event. I’ve not experienced this in the United States before. Most the trade events I attend, including those we organize, are built around a content and a trade show with the producer themselves in mind. At the Progetto Fuoco, booth after booth features creatively arranged bags of wood pellets and attendees walk up and roll pellet samples between their thumb and finger, asking about net caloric values and ash content. Distributors were welcome into elaborate booths, offered espresso in the morning, beer and wine in the afternoon and volumes got sold.
European producers are facing the same challenges as producers here. I spoke with probably a half dozen different producers and asked how business was both this year, and specifically how business was going at the show. Each of them pointed to lower fuel oil prices and warmer than expected winters as the principal drags on the market.
I saw some, but not very many, sample bags that carried a Made in the USA designation. This is far from a scientific assessment, but is nevertheless a real observation. I saw just a handful of pellet bags that were Made in the USA. A small handful more were Made in North America. I didn’t anticipate seeing many with the dollar being so strong against the euro, but they were really pretty rare. The Canadian dollar is more favorable for buyers paying with euros, but I didn’t see many. Gordon Murray and Michelle Rebiere were both at the event and I’m going to catch up with them for my article to get their reaction to that. The producer field can best be described as pan-European. I saw French producers, Austrian producers, German producers and a broad swath of east European producers from places like Latvia, Slovenia, Poland and Russia.
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Wood heat is broadly celebrated in Italy. My biggest regret from the week is not spending more time exploring the multitude of appliance manufacturers at the event. With just a day and a half at the event, I simply couldn’t spend the time I wanted to exploring this part of the show. I did a walk-through and took some pictures and was totally knocked out by the variety of designs, styles and systems available for residential customers. I’ll be sure to include some of the handsome and very modern designs in longer feature I’m writing.
North American producers no doubt envy the market share wood heat enjoys in places like Austria and Italy. I know I do. I think also that if the exchange rate picture changes, this market will likely start seeing more North American volume.