All the obvious signs are here that Autumn is on its way; lots of Sloes, Damsons and Blackberries to be picked, chillier mornings and evenings and of course the ‘Great British Bake Off’ is back on our screens. This reminds me of the old saying ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’ and as all celebrity chefs and cooks keep telling us ‘the best results come from using the best ingredients’.
By publishing our monthly quality reports, we show you the quality of the end product but we haven’t really talked about what goes into our wood pellets or how they are made, so let’s look at the raw materials we use and where they come from.
Where does our timber come from?
Our factory is situated on the South West coast of Scotland next to the Galloway National Forest (GNF) which is the largest forested area in UK. Most of our timber comes from the GNF but we also take from other Scottish Forests. However, whichever forest the timber comes from, they all adhere to either the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®) or the Forest Standard this is why we are confident in our wood pellets’ sustainability credentials.
The type of trees we use for our wood pellet production are softwood trees such as Spruce and Larch. These trees are quick growing in the warm and wet climate of South West Scotland and have a thirty-year production cycle from planting to felling, with thinning taking place at 15 and 20 years. We don’t use any hard wood species..
An example of a typical UK forestry crop rotation.
The timber we take in for processing has been rejected from other manufacturing processes, where the timber specifications require trees to be a certain size, shape and straightness. Therefore, what we take in is the over or under sized, bent and crooked but luckily for us these ‘defects’ don’t matter and they all make perfectly good wood pellets.
Along with rejected timber we also take in sawmill co-product in the form of sawdust and wood chips which is added into the production process.
So, our wood pellets are bit like bubble and squeak, in that we use all the bits that no one wants create pellets to warm your house, that the whole family can enjoy.
To see what our wood pellets deliver in terms of heat, please take a look at our July quality report below.
July 2017 Land Energy – Certificate of Analysis – Copy
