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 _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://www.bioenergylists.org/
