Enviva announces new wood pellet contracts: Correction

Spanish Market: Biomass
02/03/23

Corrected volume for contract with biofuels company in paragraph 1 from 500,000t/yr to 60,000t/yr

US wood pellet producer Enviva has announced more than 600,000 t/yr of new contracts to supply industrial customers in Europe and North America.

The company disclosed three new 10- to 15-year take-or-pay offtake agreements that will commence in 2024-25. A 10-year contract to supply an existing US-based biofuels company with 60,000 t/yr of woody biomass for the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and other fuels is expected to commence in 2024. While take-or-pay deals with two new European industrial customers that are converting their operations from coal to biomass firing for ramp-up volumes of 500,000 t/yr and 60,000 t/yr will commence in 2024 and 2025 and run for 10-15 years and 10 years, respectively, it said in its fourth-quarter 2022 results released on 1 March.

Enviva in September last year signed a contract to supply Alder Fuels, a US clean technology developer and green crude producer, with 750,000 t/yr of woody biomass for SAF production from 2024.

Record pellet sales

The company's wood pellet deliveries reached "record volumes" of 1.5mn t in October-December last year, about 35pc higher than in the third quarter and up from 1.3mn t in the fourth quarter of 2021, it said. These were sold at "higher-than-expected average sale prices", the company added.

"Enviva had three separate customers [in the fourth quarter of 2022] request not to take shipments owing to various operational challenges they were experiencing, and Enviva, in turn, had shipments available to sell at a premium compared with deliveries into the originally scheduled contracts," it said. "These are normal opportunities that arise periodically and, in 2022, we were able to take advantage of strong pellet spot pricing conditions."

The revenue from these redirected volumes amounted to $32mn above the take-or-pay obligation, Enviva said.

Capacity increases

Enviva plans to add another four new fully contracted wood pellet plants by 2027, as well as undertake several "capital-light projects" to increase nameplate production capacity, it said.

The company last year announced plans to build a third 1mn t/yr plant in its Pascagoula cluster near Bond, Mississippi, which is now expected to come on line in 2025 after securing the necessary permits.

The commissioning of its 1.1mn t/yr plant in Epes, Alabama — the second plant in its Pascagoula cluster — now has been delayed to the first half of 2024, from late 2023, because of improvements that are being made to the plant's design, the company said.

Enviva in March 2022 started up its first plant in the cluster, the 750,000 t/yr Lucedale facility, with production expected to have reached nameplate capacity by the end of last year. And a decision on building a fourth pellet plant in the cluster is expected at about the end of this year. Enviva is also looking at sites in Georgia and South Carolina for a new greenfield project in its Savannah cluster of plants.

Production rates from Enviva's 10 US plants are expected to be 6mn t this year, it said.

By John Cooper

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19/12/25

Viewpoint: Vietnamese pellet supply to remain volatile

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EU may crank up coal and steel research funds in 2027

11/12/25

EU may crank up coal and steel research funds in 2027

London, 11 December (Argus) — The European Commission could fund a much larger share of research in the coal and steel industry from 2027, according to a staff working document published yesterday. The EU Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) would fund 70pc of corporate research and 100pc of academic research into green initiatives if the EU moves forth with the proposal. It currently funds 50pc of both corporate and academic research projects, but has struggled to attract participants or meet its spending targets, noting that the "underspending of the project is rooted in a lack of attractiveness of certain aspects of the programme". RFCS spent 57pc of its €43mn ($50mn) budget for large coal projects and only 31pc of its €208mn budget for steel research from 2021 to 2024. Brussels, troubled by a lack of applications, consulted companies and academics this year and found that its spending requirements were the largest barrier. Most were unable or unwilling to fund 50pc of large research projects themselves. RFCS has supported a number of groups hoping to repurpose old coal mines for clean energy. GreenJOBS and Mine-TO-H2, two funding recipients, both plan on making green hydrogen from mine water, while GrEnMine received pilot funding worth €3.5mn to research new ways to store gravitational energy in abandoned mines. Others, such as REM and GI-mine, are working on new methods to capture methane from coal mines. In the steel sector, RFCS has awarded funds to hydrogen power projects such as ProSynteg and HYDREAMS and research groups such as BIOCODE, which hopes to replace up to 10pc of the coal in coke ovens with biomass. The EU dissolved the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) — an agency tasked with making a common European steel market, which eventually led to the creation of the EU — in 2002. The EU used revenues from ECSC assets to launch and fund the RFCS in the same year, and boosted the programme in 2021 by tapping into the assets themselves. By Austin Barnes Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

Indian coal plants raise biomass co-firing in FY2024-25

09/12/25

Indian coal plants raise biomass co-firing in FY2024-25

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Floods disrupt PKS supplies in peninsular Malaysia

02/12/25

Floods disrupt PKS supplies in peninsular Malaysia

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EU readies new bioenergy strategy

26/11/25

EU readies new bioenergy strategy

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