VIDÉOS

The company best:Pellets, based in Karlsruhe, offers sustainable and carbon-neutral wood pellets sourced from locally managed forests. Established in 2014 through a joint venture between German Pellets and ZG Raiffeisen, the company has experienced continuous growth, employing over 50 staff members. Operating from regional branches in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Saarland, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, they ensure the production of high-quality fuels. To expand their value chain, best:Pellets has installed a facility from Ecokraft AG that converts pellet production residues (pellet breakage and dust) into new pellets. This local production minimizes CO2 emissions and promotes sustainability. The facility produces up to 300 kg of pellets per hour, supporting a circular economy beneficial to both the company and the environment. Customers appreciate these sustainable, local products, and best:Pellets plans to install similar facilities at additional locations to meet rising demand and further reduce environmental impact.

The Dutch family-owned company De Zwaan has been renowned for its high-quality oak tabletops for many decades. The company places great emphasis on state-of-the-art technology and precise craftsmanship. However, during the production process, there is a generation of waste materials such as wood chips that have previously incurred significant disposal costs. In order to reduce waste disposal expenses and find an environmentally sustainable solution, the company began exploring alternatives. The solution was found in an ECOKRAFT pelletizing plant, which allows the wood chips to be compressed into high-quality energy pellets. These pellets now serve as fuel, enabling De Zwaan to significantly reduce waste disposal costs while simultaneously supplying their own factory with self-generated fuel. The family takes pride in the fact that the company can now be handed over to the third generation as an environmentally conscious enterprise. De Zwaan not only prioritizes sustainability but also strives for energy independence. By producing their own energy pellets from the residual materials, the company contributes to environmental conservation and can continue its sustainable development.

The family-run company Heiss Energie from Schnaitsee has made it its business to produce high-quality energy pellets from wood chip waste residues. Heiss Energie's core business began 20 years ago with a biogas plant and biogas power generation. Soon the waste heat of the plant was used to dry the wood chips. Nowadays, Heiss Energie has specialized in blowing in wood chips at the customer's site. In the process, a share of residual dust and small particles of the wood chips always accumulates. However, since the company did not want to simply dispose of this valuable waste residue, it was looking for a solution on how to generate a useful product from it again. Thus the idea of pelletizing and converting them into heating pellets was born. Today, 10% of the company's turnover can be attributed to pellet production - and the trend is rising. For Tobias Heiss, not only energy costs play a major role, but also sustainability. Because many customers would like to be more independent of oil and gas imports from abroad in the future and buy more regionally. By expanding the product range to include the production of energy pellets, Tobias Heiss was able to position himself more broadly, which was a benefit for him. Because the concentration on renewable raw materials such as wood pellets, can be combined very well with the fuel trade. Since the pelletizing plants of ECOKRAFT are designed for small and medium-size enterprises, thus also a small medium-size enterprise such as Heiss Energie, has the possibility to buy such a plant and must not invest millions into a large industrial plant.

Landi is a nationwide agricultural cooperative in Switzerland that has existed for over 135 years. The processing of spelt is a large branch of this cooperative. As the amount of spelt husk produced during the husking process grew from year to year, a solution was sought to convert this husk back into a valuable product. They quickly came up with the idea of processing the husk into pellets after husking and then returning them to the agricultural ecocycle as animal bedding. The biggest advantage of pelleting is that you have 5 times less volume and the bedding pellets are dust-free, which is especially important in chicken or beef cattle houses and in horse stalls, due to allergies. Ecokraft's pelleting system met all the criteria for Landi Moossee. One of the biggest challenges was the very tight space conditions. Because Ecokraft's pelleting plant can be set up very flexibly, it was possible to install a tailor-made plant for Landi Moossee. This resulted in an effective plant in a very small space, which was perfectly integrated into the overall system. The plant is facilitated by an electronic control system and the clear display on the pellet mill, which allows all data to be read off. Another argument in favor of the cooperative was that everything came from a single source, which meant that they only had one contact person for questions. At Landi, the topic of sustainability is very important and with these high-quality animal bedding pellets, the cycle of an organic substance is optimally closed again. For Landi Moossee it was a very good decision to invest in the Ecokraft pelleting plant and the satisfaction of both customers and producers is high.

The successful company PerNaturam from Gödenroth is a manufacturer of natural feed supplements for dogs, cats and horses. The main competence of PerNaturam are mostly herbs, which have an incredible volume. Therefore, the company has been using pellets for some time to compress the volume but also to bind dust. Especially in the supplementary feed sector, certain substances have to be balanced and here pelleting has proven to be very effective. A pelleting plant from Ecokraft is used for this purpose. The reasons for this were obvious to PerNaturam: the plant is flexible, modular and has short changeover times with a higher throughput. In addition, the pelleting plant is operated in-house by only one trained person, another advantage that is highly appreciated. The company relies on high-quality ingredients, herbs and other blends, which are then processed into high-quality pellets in the plant on an almost daily basis. Pellet production now accounts for 20% of total production. This also offers many advantages for the customer, because the pellets, unlike loose herbs, are easier to feed, handle and store. The goal of PerNaturam is to extend the animal feed with vegetables, herbs and raw fibers so that everything the animal needs is represented in the bowl. The feed pellets are also packaged using a bagging plant from Ecokraft. PerNaturam is also already playing with the idea of a second plant in order to obtain double the output. This is the right step to take in order to continue offering customers healthy and species-appropriate animal feed in a practical and easy-to-handle form.

Sustainability has always played an important role for Markus Hoffmann from Wolferstadt. It all started back in 2010 with his own solar park. After a short time, however, the question arose as to whether the solar park should be mowed or grazed. And so Markus Hofmann decided to graze it naturally with a special breed, the Shropshire sheep. However, this solution soon led to a new problem: where to put all the sheep wool? For a long time he had to dispose of it for a fee, as he could not find any buyers. But he was no longer satisfied with this, as the wool was a valuable natural product for him. After some research, he found out that sheep wool can also be pelletized. And so he went in search of a suitable pelletizing plant. In the process, he came across the company ECOKRAFT and was very quickly convinced of the plant due to the wide range of materials that can be pelletized with it. In 2019, he invested in the first pelletizing solution and has since been pelletizing the wool of his own sheep and of colleagues. This has enabled him to produce a sustainable, chemical-free and high-quality fertilizer from the wool that he would otherwise have had to dispose of for 200 euros per ton, which he now also sells to small-scale and hobby gardeners as a regionally sustainable product. Sheep wool pellets have a variety of positive fertilizing characteristics and are therefore ideal for all plants. They are easy to dose, 100% organic without any chemical additives, store water over a long period of time and slowly release the nutrients to the plants. This also prevents the plant from being burned. In 2021, Markus invested in a second ECOKRAFT pelleting plant and now also pelletizes more than just sheep wool. As part of a contract pelleting service, he offers the complete range of what customers want, from hay, straw, various mixtures, insect droppings or soybean pods. In a packaging plant, also from ECOKRAFT, the company's own pellets and those of customers are being packed in various bundles and big bags. The business is going well and he is very happy with his decision. In the future, the Hofmanns plan to put another plant into operation.