[Stoves] Report on?APBC - first two days

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at gmail.com
Thu Sep 22 16:10:08 CDT 2011


Dear Kobus

The tried and tested method seems to be allowing the charcoal makers to come
into the forest - in a clearing - to process trees that are scorched on the
outside. And there are plenty of those. The economics were (not sure this
year) about R750-800 per ton for powder/fines and R1125 for lump charcoal.
That is delivered and I think the delivery point is somewhere like Piet
Retief where there is a railhead (maybe). 

The guy who bought Havelock Mine Village was planning to finance his
eco-village with charcoal produced from the nearby forest cuttings - huge
amounts of biomass that is otherwise wasted. The transport from Havelock is
daunting because it is so deep in the mountains and the 35 km aerial
cableway to Barberton is no longer operating.

I calculated that for cut/split wood, it was profitable and sustainable to
transport to JHB from a radius of 400 km. For charcoal it would be much
farther because of higher energy density and higher value per kg. The
burn-off of tree trash and trash trees is vast, huge, and no one gets
anything from it. It is ridiculous.

Regards
Crispin
+++++

Hi Crispin. Interesting and I certainly applaud their entrepreneurial
spirit. Apart from labour cost and cost of equipment, the contractor's only
other costs would be sieving/bagging and transporting the charcoal either to
the market or storage area where it needs to be kept dry. I am all for
making charcoal from plantation waste as opposed to just burning it to
minimize fire risk - or to make way for new plantings but every forestry
company has procedures and not many are allowed to deviate from tried and
tested protocols. 

Regards. Kobus 





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