European Pellet Council launches third version of the ENplus Handbook

The European Pellet Council (EPC) has published a new version of the ENplus Handbook, to adapt the certification system to the latest market developments.

The ENplus certification, covering the entire supply chain of wood pellets, was launched in 2011 to ensure a sustainable development of the pellet market by harmonising quality on the international level. Since the start of the certification scheme the production of certified pellets has increased significantly and is expected to reach 7 million tonnes in 2015.

Currently, there are certified producers in 35 countries and four continents. In this context, the ENplus Handbook, which essentially defines the rights, responsibilities and obligations of all the participants in the certification programme, needed to be updated. The review process came to an end with the release of the 3.0 version of the handbook on the ENplus website on 1 August 2015.

Over the past few years the pellet market has grown significantly. With this rapid growth, players have become more international, pellets are traded with increasing transport distances and more complex supply chains have been formed. During that period, the pellet standards have also evolved; the international ISO 17225-2 standard was published in 2014 making the European EN 14961-2 standard obsolete.

ENplus had to adjust to these changes to continue guaranteeing the pellet quality all along the supply chain, from the producers to the end users. New terms to describe new business scenarios were developed, the quality requirements of the pellets have been adapted to the international ISO 17225-2 standard with some of them being even stricter than the standard.

Another major change was the introduction of a service provider certification ensuring that everyone in the supply chain takes care of the pellet quality.