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Due to my line of business which is installing wood burning stoves and being a firewood supplier i know people in the firwood industry. I also know people who have wood pellet producing facilities. If i could supply oak pellets at £10 per 10kg bag plus delivery would anyone buy them and what kind of quantities would you take?

The other question is - how clean are the machines that are producing the pellets?

Not casting any aspersions here. It is just to produce a food-grade pellet, they really should be produced separately from non-food pellets (either a separate machine, or complete cleandown between production runs), and with food-grade machine lubrication. This may make it non-economical for short runs, such as you may be looking at.

Certainly the price is right - if I remember correctly, it is what Jackie charged for her oak when she got it, and it is about the same as I am paying for the Lil' Devils pellets (which have somewhat underwhelmed me). There would also be the feel-good about using UK-sourced pellets.

To be honest i've barely scratched the surface with the idea. It just sprung to mind that i knew a pellet producer so asked him how much per tonn and the prices were quite good.

I'd have to look into the lube and the whole food grade side of things. I may just get a tonn for myself if it's going to be too much hassle getting them food grade.

Please don't let my comments be a downer on your idea. I just thought I'd point out some stuff that I was blissfully unaware of up until last year. Better now than when you are committed

You may find that the lube thing is something that is easily addressed.

Yeah the lube thing was something i never even thought about. Anyways....had a word with him and he says he can easily use vegetable oil instead of mineral oil.

It's looking quite good. He can bag them into 10kg bags for me and deliver them on a pallet. May get a cubic metre in just to see how they burn. Done a couple of cooks now and they're quite thirsty on pellets so would be nice to get the costs down.

crphillips wrote:Yeah the lube thing was something i never even thought about. Anyways....had a word with him and he says he can easily use vegetable oil instead of mineral oil.

That' s sounding interesting, in that case. I enjoyed using oak, and using a UK source appeals to me more than using imported pellets.

Let me know how it all goes (I'll let you test it out first! ). Whereabouts are you/your friend based? I'm in Lincolnshire, just over the border from Peterborough.

Chris