After reaching its all-time high, with a value of 220.1 % compared to the base value of 100 % from the first quarter of 2019 (when the EXW index began to be compiled), the ENplus® pellet market in Spain is beginning to recover some normality.
Since December 2022, and confirmed in the subsequent months of January, February and March 2023, factory prices have been falling slowly but consistently after two months of contained increases that followed the extraordinary price surge that occurred in the summer of last year.
The highest average factory price of the year was €393.7/t in November, with the most significant month-on-month variation occurring between August and September, when it increased by nearly €60 per ton. From then on, the price continued to rise more gradually until the November peak, and has been declining since. In March, the farmgate price was €309.6 per ton, equivalent to an EXW value of €176.6 per ton compared to the base value.
This decline in the price at origin is occurring more noticeably in Europe, where the increase was also more pronounced.
With the heating season ending abruptly and early, the downward trend is expected to continue until the end of summer. This price decline may be slower than that seen during the first months of 2023, since, although production costs have stabilized considerably in recent months, they remain high, especially the cost of raw materials.
The report uses as a reference the factory price of a full truckload of ENplus® A1 certified pellets within a 500-ton contract, excluding VAT. The EXW index is calculated using a telephone survey of over 70% of ENplus® certified manufacturers.
The average price is obtained by statistically processing the price data, eliminating extreme values that deviate from the mean by more than three times the standard deviation. The quarterly price variation is expressed in %, with the base price being 100%, the average price corresponding to the first quarter of 2019.
With this index, AVEBIOM aims to obtain objective data on market trends in a more immediate way.