In 2018, exports of wood pellets from Russia reached 1.5 million tons, which is 7% more than in 2017. In monetary terms, exports amounted to $ 186 million. The volume grows for the second year in a row by 30% per year. Over the past 5 years, export flows show a positive trend. Export direction increased by 72% in physical terms and 47% in value.
The difficulty of determining the volume of the market is hampered by the fact that the official statistics provided by Rosstat does not reflect the production volumes for small and medium-sized enterprises and individual entrepreneurs. Therefore, real production volumes are slightly higher than official statistics. According to WhatWood, in 2018, 1.8 million tons of wood pellets were produced in Russia, 300 thousand tons (about 17%) of which were sold domestically, and 1.5 million tons were exported outside the territory of the Russian Federation. The value of the market reached 14 billion rubles, of which only 2.3 billion rubles accounts for domestic consumption.
The total capacity of all Russian wood pellet plants is 3.6 million tons of finished products per year, but the industry average load of the plants is 50%. Most of the pellet enterprises are located in the North-West (Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, Vologda regions, Republic of Karelia). In the period 2016-