Estonia-headed wood pellet producer AS Graanul Invest has announced that a subsidiary of the company has acquired a second bulk carrier to transport wood pellets. The new vessel significantly reduces both the carbon footprint and the cost of transport.
Named after the group’s production facility in Lithuania, “Alytus” is the second large bulk carrier in the Graanul Invest fleet, a sister of the first vessel “Imavere” which was acquired in January 2018.
The 186 m long and 27 m wide vessel was built in 2011. The dead weight tonnage (DWT) of the vessel is 36 000 tonnes which means it is capable of loading around 31 000 tonnes of wood pellets on account of the volume per tonne.
“Alytus” has been entered into the Cyprus Registry of Ships and will be manned by Marlow Navigation. As with “Imavere”, the technical operator is Germany-based Grona Shipmanagement GmbH & Co. KG, and the daily operations are managed by the Graanul Invest Logistics team.
Sustainability and reducing the ecological footprint of our products has always been a priority of Graanul Invest. All our customers want the product’s carbon footprint to be as small as possible at the expense of the energy used in transport and production, and the demand for environmentally friendly biofuels is growing, said Olari Tiide, Logistics Manager of Graanul Invest.
The optimally sized vessels enable Graanul Invest to organize logistics in the best way and significantly reduce both the transport cost and carbon footprint of the wood pellets.
Investing in a new vessel is a direct benefit for both the environment and the companies within the Graanul Invest group, Olari Tiide said.
Graanul Invest supplies sustainable biomass fuels for its partners across Europe through several ports in Baltics. The largest markets are the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
