The first company to produce wood pellets from central African wood waste
the story
In 2020, as I was finishing a project on financing fish farms, I thought that I would like to complete one last professional project before retiring. Since our country house in Golling, south of Salzburg, has a nice pellet stove, and since there is abundant wood waste in Gabon, I decided to look into the possibility of producing pellets in Central Africa.”
Chris Fodor, Founder
The vision
Congo Basin Pellet’s first factory is located in Gabon, about 25 kms from Libreville, in the Special Economic Zone at Nkok. This plant can produce 30,000 tons/year, although given the different wood species used, the real capacity will probably be 25% lower. Wood waste comes from the 55 wood transformation companies (sawmills, veneer plants) in the Special Economic Zone. The finished biomass products (pellets and briquettes) are exported by container to start, and by bulk Handysize vessel as of 2023.
The product
Congo Basin Pellets is the first company to have successfully produced wood pellets using the local tropical wood wastes. Our pellets have been tested in Vienna and found to be of the top quality (ENPlus Class A1), and they have 10% more energy than European pellets.
The company will introduce a new product line, briquettes, so as to transform the abundant hard wood waste, which is difficult to compress into pellets. The briquettes will be high-density cylinders of about 8 cms in diameter and about 30 cms long, each weighing about 2 kilos. Briquettes are used for both domestic heating and for industrial boilers.
The company will introduce a new product line, briquettes, so as to transform the abundant hard wood waste, which is difficult to compress into pellets. The briquettes will be high-density cylinders of about 8 cms in diameter and about 30 cms long, each weighing about 2 kilos. Briquettes are used for both domestic heating and for industrial boilers.
Our values
Congo Basin Pellets uses only wood waste, and absolutely no raw logs. All of the waste wood used by Gabon Pellets in its Nkok production plant comes from logs that have been certified by Tracer.
Additionally, a subset of this wood waste comes from FSC-certified (chain of control) wood transformation companies within the GSEZ. So this subset of wood waste has “double” certification.
From the outset, the company
established a low automation factory, with much higher levels of employment than in Europe: at cruising speed, in 2023, we expect to provide employment to about 70 people, plus many spot jobs for specialized workers such as welders, electricians, mechanics, truckers, day laborers. From the outset we have employed only Gabonese nationals.
Financial returns while supporting long-term environmental or social benefits.