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The current market conditions were presented by during Pellets Forum Wels 2008 in Austria. Total of 60 countries presented 900 delegates. Jonas Höglund from SVEBIO, the Swedish Bioenergy Association said that total of 1,600,000 tons of pellets were used in 2007, and of them 600,000 were used in single family houses and 300,000 tons in the more important daily middle scale market up to 2 MW. Sweden now has 97 production plants (51 are below 5,000 tons per year and 5 over 100,000 MT/Y). In 2007 350,000 tons of wood pellets were imported into Sweden from countries like Canada, Estonia and Lithuania. Chairman ChristianRakos from Pro Pellets presented the Austrian situation. He told that the situation was quite better this year in comparison with the disaster last season. They have had to work hard with media communication and today the have a very positive press coverage. The pellets prices are low and stable, investments are increasing and the production capacity is somewhat lower than 1,000,000 tons. The domestic demand is around half of that so Austrian producers are into export, mainly to Italy. Italy currently holds the capacity of 600,000 tons of wood pellets says Marino Bertone Bertone from AIEL. More than 800,000 pellet stoves have been sold in Italy. Between 2005 and 2007 there is 400 percent increase in wood pellets production capacity in Germany. There are 40 German producers totaling the capacity of 1,800,000 tons with expected growth to 2,300,000 tons in 2008. The current issue in Germany as per Martin Bentele from German Pellets Association is lack of strong development trend. There are 85,000 heating units that use pellets but no large biofuel power plants. French government is now supporting the development of pellet plants. The sales of pellet stove in France are reaching now 10,000 units per year. There are 30 pellet plants and national pellet standards have been developed. Frédéric Douard from French Itebe presented France.
During this session, Fransisco Puene-Escan, Spain, and Didier Marchal from Valbiom in Belgium presented their still small pellets countries, with the exception of the two very large power plants owned by Electra Bell in Belgium together using 700,000 tons of pellets. Switzerland pellets use is still quite low comparing with other countries. There are 4200 pellet stoves and 7400 pellet boilers. Total consumption is around 90000 tons per year national wide produced locally.
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