Argus Biomass Asia Conference

Marco has been in the biomass business for more than 10 years in various roles, as a woodpellet plant manager in SK Forest, as a trader for Genco’s co-firing market in Korea and as a developer for dedicated biomass power plants. Now working as Global Cooperation Advisor in Korea Forest Biomass Energy Association and team manager of Green Business Team in STX corporation. Speciallized on Korean market demand and supply from domestic and abroad biomass resources. Read less

Takanobu Aikawa is a Senior Researcher at the Renewable Energy Institute in Tokyo, since June 2016. Takanobu was appointed a member of the Biomass Sustainability Working Group organized by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in April 2018, and he is a board member of the Japan Woody Bioenergy Association. Takanobu was previously employed in a senior research consulting position for Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting, from 2004 to 2016, where he was involved in investigations and consulting activities in the forestry sector. Takanobu obtained his master’s degree in forest ecology from the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University. In March 2016, he completed his doctorate in agricultural studies on the theme of human resources development policy in the area of forest management. Read less

Patrick Bobillier is the biomass trader at Enviva, the world’s largest producer of sustainable wood pellets. His role is to expand the supply chain of third-party sourcing for wood pellets worldwide, to ensure and optimize deliveries into existing long-term contracts. He joined Enviva in 2018 and has over nine years of experience trading physical commodities. Prior to joining Enviva, he spent four years trading grains at COFCO International. Read less

Ralf worked for Swedish-Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso for more than 12 years as Director for Commodity and Energy Risk Management in Helsinki and London before joining French energy firm Engie in 2008. He held various managerial positions in oil, power and coal trading and is now responsible for Engie’s Global Biomass and Shipping activity. He is based in London. Read less

David Wong is the marketing director of Rainbow Pellet, which has been producing pellets since 2014 together with its associated group of companies. The family-owned company has been supplying the Asian market actively and more recently, it has also been selling into the Europe market. The wood pellet business is a subsidiary of another family business which focuses on international sawed lumber trade since 1985. Rainbow Pellet holds PEFC certification and aims to be SBP certified by January 2020. The company is currently the leading wood pellet manufacturer in Malaysia. Read less

Naoki Kawamoto graduated from the Faculty of Engineering Kyushu University in 1984. For the first 7 years, he was engaged in fuel conversion activities from oil to coal and coal sales, followed by 6 years at the head office and 10 years in China for coal purchase and sales.In 2008, he became Sales Manager of the Coal and Energy Solution Business Department, responsible for coal and oil sales to Japanese power and steel companies and then Deputy General Manager,responsible for overseas mine development. He then served as Chairman of IAR, which owns and operates three coal mines in Australia, for three years. After 35 years in coal business field, he was promoted as DGM of Black Pellet Business Development from 2019 to June 2022. He played a main role in setting up the Black Pellet Forum in Japan and is currently leading the Japan Black Pellet Forum as Group Secretariat. Read less

Ken Hanada is currently a Senior Manager at erex singapore Pte.Ltd. Having a background in civil engineering, he began his career as a plant engineer of NPP. In 2016 he joined erex and had been working in the retail and corporate planning department. Recently, being based in Singapore, managing stockpile in Malaysia and Indonesia especially for PKS is his main responsibility. He is a director of SGE (Straits Green Energy in Malaysia) and DSE (PT DHARMA SUMBER ENERGI in Indonesia). Due to the huge demand from Japan market, he would be engaged not only in PKS or Wood pellet but also in the development of new biofuel. Read less

Mark joined Drax in 2017 from a power market background concentrated on data and intra-day power trading. Since then he has focused primarily on spot trading in the biomass market and is responsible for managing near-term fuel requirements at Drax. Read less

Ryuu is the Head of Asia trading at CM Biomass, a world leading independent full-service biomass supplier based in Copenhagen. With 10 years of experience in the Asian Biomass market, his role is to expand the team, producers and end users in Asia for the group, with a long-term target of establishing an effective trading network of Biomass between Asia and the rest of the world. Prior to CM Biomass, he spent 9 years working at Hanwa as one of the founding members of their Renewable Energy Department, which he was responsible for overall sourcing of Biomass materials, sales of biomass to regions out of Japan/Korea, as well as new project developments. Read less

Erisa Senerdem is editor for the Argus Biomass Report. She has previously covered Petroleum Coke and contributed to the Argus Coal Daily International report as well as covering gas and power markets at Argus. Prior to Argus, she has worked as a researcher, university lecturer, journalist and a consultant. She has a Ph.D. in economics, with a special focus on the energy field. Read less

Takeshi Maruo is the manager of the coal and biomass team at bulk carrier group no 1 at NYK Bulk and Projects Carriers. He joined Nippon Yusen Kaisha in 2002 and has spent 18 years at NYK Group, in charge of Asia-Pacific for conventional vessels, the corporate planning group, PCC and the regional headquarters for containers in London. He joined NYK Bulk Project in October 2018, and takes great pleasure in supporting customers in the biomass business field Read less

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Yoshinobu Kusano joined Renova as an Executive Adviser in 2017. From January 2018 he has been head of Renova’s Fuel Procurement Group, Biomass Energy. Prior to that, he worked for Sumitomo head office as well as offices in Saudi Arabia and in Johannesburg as its representatives. He has been involved in the start-up of overseas plantation forest management and operation joint venture as Director. From 2003, he has been intensively focusing on biomass fuel development and sourcing as a head of Sumitomo Biomass Group. He holds a BA in Law from Waseda university in Tokyo. Read less

Carsten Huljus is Chief Executive of the Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP), a not-for-profit multi-stakeholder organisation that has developed an independent third-party certification system to provide assurance that woody biomass is sourced from legal and sustainable sources. Over the past 20 years Carsten has been involved in forest sustainability and chain of custody certification (FSC, PEFC), consulting and related activities and projects globally on behalf of private clients, GIZ, the World Bank, WWF, FAO and EBRD. Read less

Ian has worked for Heidelberg Materials (formerly HeidelbergCement) for the past 14 years in various roles and locations globally with a strong focus on the sourcing of fuels (in particular alternative fuels) and CO2 markets. Since July last year he has been heading up procurement for the APAC region and as such is helping to drive the strategic goals to increase alternative fuels substitution rate and reduce CO2 intensity in all business lines. Read less

Shahrul is the Operations Director of Danone Specialized Nutrition, Indonesia. Well experienced end to end Operations and Supply Chain professional with about 27 years of experience. On top of the main task of delivering business priorities, he is also focused on delivering the sustainability ambition of Danone Indonesia in line with its global direction. Prior to Danone, Shahrul served in senior management roles managing cross functional initiatives across operations and supply chain with BASF Chemicals, PepsiCo, Mondelez International, Coca-Cola & regional/local conglomerates. His experience spans across various technical, problem solving, people management capabilities in transforming operations and supply chain to deliver both business and customers satisfactions or goals. Read less

Lukas joined Polytechnik in 2006 as an assistant to his father Leo Schirnhofer, the company's owner and CEO. In 2010, after completing his master's degree in corporate finance at the University of Vienna, Lukas switched to sales with a focus on the markets in Northern Europe, Russia and Australasia. In this role, Lukas led Polytechnik's market entry into Finland, Norway and New Zealand. In 2014 Lukas joined the company management as the designated successor to the managing director and has been a member of the management board since 2018. Read less

Hong Hao is the founder and chairman of Great Resources New Energy, a company provides comprehensive solution to the need of bioenergy with business range covering biomass fuel trading, biomass boiler design and manufacture, and bioheat plant operation. Over the past 17 years, Hong has contributed significantly to the wider use of bioenergy in China by supplying carbon neutral bioheat to industrial, commercial and residential customers. His pioneering work by supplying bioheat to biopharma cluster and constructing CHP plant has helped emission reduction greatly. He also played an important role in setting biomass boiler emission standard at local and national level. Read less

Kevin Vandewalle has spent almost 10 years in the renewable energy sector, with a focus on biomass to energy solutions. Since 2014 he has been based in Kuala Lumpur as a regional sales manager and is responsible for Vyncke’s product range in southeast Asia and the Pacific. He was previously in Belgium serving the global agro and food customer base. Read less

Dr. Kenneth Tran is the Director of Strategies and Co-Founder at Ayo Biomass. Ayo Biomass is a wood pellet production company from Vietnam, born in 2018 with the mission to supply clean and safe wood pellets to the industry, reliably. Kenneth is also the Chief Technology Officer of Koidra, providing smart industrial controls to manufacturing plants. Kenneth previously worked at Microsoft Research. Read less

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Jayendu is the Director and Deputy Head of Drewry Maritime Advisors and has been with the company for the past 17 years. He has led research and advisory assignments in different shipping and port sectors. He has undertaken numerous consultancy assignments on due diligence, feasibility study, freight procurement strategy, and logistics cost estimation etc for potential investors, financial institutions, shipping companies, port promoters. He has done MA (Economics) and M. Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Before joining Drewry, he was engaged in academics and research in multiple areas of economics including macroeconomic projects sponsored by multilateral organisations for over seven years. He has a keen interest in developing an econometric model for the maritime industry. Read less

Michael Wild, economist and engineer by education, is active in renewable energies for practically his entire 26 years professional career. He has pioneered Biomass fired district heating systems in Austria and conversion of coal fired systems to biomass in former socialist countries. The first internet based biomass trading platform (ABEX) was started by him in 1999. Until 2010 he led the international biomass trading company EBES creating numerous intercontinental supply chains for palm kernel shell, pellets and wood chips. From 2007 he took a leading position in torrefaction technology development forming also a consortium with Andritz AG. In 2012 he helped setting up within AEBIOM the International Biomass Torrefaction Council IBTC whose members elected him president. Also from 2012 on he has been supporting Bridgewell Resources Ltd in developing their Biomass desk acting as their European Sales Manger. Read less

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Dr Robert Charnock received his PhD in Carbon Accounting from the London School of Economics and Political Science, while working with the United Nations to develop a financial sector toolkit for analysing and managing the risks of climate change. In 2021, he led a team commissioned by the UK’s Financial Reporting Council to investigate how FTSE 100 and 250 companies use climate scenario analysis to inform their climate risk management and net zero transition strategies. Robert is now Director of the Metis Institute for Climate Strategy in Singapore, funded by RSK Group, and also sits on the Technical Reference Panel of the International Sustainability Standards Board and the Research Panel of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland. Read less

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Andy has worked in the UK’s organics and alternative fuels sectors for more than 14 years, including nine years at SUEZ UK. Andy’s focus is on the commercial development of alternative fuels for the wood, RDF and SRF markets requiring the development of their fuel production facilities and associated supply chains. Under his leadership, SUEZ UK became the largest exporter of alternative fuels and the first company to successfully supply SRF to non-EU markets for the cement industry. Subsequently, Andy set up his own consultancy business for companies involved in the alternative fuels markets, with a focus on emerging markets. It is in this role that he serves as senior adviser to N+P. Andy is also chairman of the Wood Recyclers’ Association in the UK, which represents UK producers and European energy and panel board consumers. Read less

Andrew Jones is the Deputy Editor for Argus Asia Coal. He joined Argus in 2009, based in the company’s Singapore office. His initial focus was on the Asia-Pacific dry bulk and tanker markets before switching to the coal desk, where he now focuses on price discovery, news and analysis of regional thermal coal and petroleum coke markets. Having previously worked at sea, Andrew started his journalism career in the UK before moving to Asia in 2006 as a correspondent with Dow Jones Newswires/The Wall Street Journal, where he covered various regional commodities markets. Read less