North American wood pellet exports fell on the year in October, mostly because of a sharp drop in US deliveries to the UK.
The US and Canada exported a total of 704,000t, down by 192,000t on the year. Despite the combined yearly decline, Canada exported 281,000t of wood pellets in October, slightly up on the year by 8,000t.
US exports to the UK fell to 346,000t in October from 442,000t a year earlier, partly as planned maintenance at UK utility Drax's plant in North Yorkshire weighed on power sector demand. Drax halted operations at its 645MW wood-fired pellet base-load unit 1 between 5 August and 11 November to install upgrades and improve efficiency. Drax's base-load unit 3 had been off line on 23 July–2 November 2020, and its unit 2 was off line on an unplanned outage for six days in early October last year.
North American exports to the UK dropped in October despite total UK biomass-fired generation rising on the year, to 1.72TWh in October from 1.47TWh, data from Drax and Imperial College show. This was probably because of a month-long unplanned outage at utility EPH's 396MW biomass-fired Lynemouth plant from 14 October 2020, which would not have impacted US deliveries to the UK in October last year, as most volumes were booked and delivered before the outage.
By contrast, Canadian exports to the UK fell by much less on the year in October. This could be as Drax may have favoured receipts from Canadian producer Pinnacle, which the utility acquired earlier in the year. Canadian deliveries to the UK fell by 25,000t to 118,000t.
Elsewhere, US wood pellet exports to the Netherlands dropped to 32,000t in October from 73,000t a year earlier. This was more than offset by quicker Canadian deliveries to the country, which rose to 60,000t in October from zero deliveries during the same month in 2020.
And shipments from North America to the Netherlands may rise further later in the year, as Dutch biomass burn may increase from November. This is as biomass burning capacity at German utility RWE's co-fired 1.5GW Eemshaven plant in the Netherlands doubled to 30pc from the start of November, following the granting of a new permit. The utility's capacity would increase by 225MW and if utilised fully, this would be equivalent to around 35,000t of additional pellets burnt each month.
US deliveries to Denmark also decreased, more than halving on the year to 30,000t. This was despite a jump in Danish average hourly biomass-fired generation to 643MW in October from 353MW a year earlier. And Dutch biomass burn for power continued to rise in November to 751MW from 474MW. The drop in October deliveries could partly be the result of brisk exports to Denmark in the previous two months.
And on Canadian exports to Asia, a year-on-year increase in exports to South Korea by 10,000t on the year to 31,000t could not offset a 25,000t drop in deliveries to Japan, which imported 45,000t of wood pellets from Canada in October.
