Critical Worker Status for Wood Pellets & Biomass Supply Chain

Wood Pellets, and the biomass supply chain have been included as a critical industry and employees given critical worker status in relation to the UK Governments Covid-19 restrictions.

Wood Pellets are an unknown powerhouse for heating to much of the UK population but the BiomassHeatWorks! campaign highlighted in a recent announcement just a few customers as an example of how many rely very heavily on wood pellets for their day to day operations. These included:

one of the U.K.’s largest poultry producers uses approximately 20,000 metric of wood pellets per annum across sites nationally.

Similarly, one of the country’s leading supermarket chains, now at the forefront of supply chain efforts, heats almost 100 of its sites using biomass wood pellets. This equates to circa 30,000 metric tons per annum with deliveries to each store every 2-3 weeks.

Biomass suppliers across the country including Pure Biofuel have already instituted a range of safety measures such as including 2m distancing, no physical contact, no-sign off sheets, and drivers to stay inside vehicles. More about those new rules are available here.

We are pleased to be able to give the reassurance to our production, logistics, office staff, distributors and customers that their deliveries are considered essential goods will still be arriving as scheduled.

Delays to be expected during lockdown period

As we all understand there are delays which are out of our control, non-essential goods are not being able to be delivered filling up ports, delaying the availability of empty containers and vehicles and generally causing congestion in the key ports and logistics terminals. This is to be expected as the new standard moving forward for as long as a general period of lockdown exists and the weeks following.

How we are working to minimise delays

What I can promise is that we are working with all our partners to ensure stock is arriving on the first option we have available. While working remotely we are not idly sitting by, but actively problem-solving a-lot of this headaches, re-arranging vessels when they are cancelled, finding new drivers when they are ill, and alternative delivery dates if things fall through.

Finally to contact us email will be easier to reach us on as the phone lines are extremely busy and please know we are doing our best to keep everyone supplied with as much stock as quickly as possible.