The price of the pellet price at origin or ex works (EXW) peaked in November 2022 and has fallen 43,5 percentage points until March 2023
After reaching its all-time high, with a value of 220,1% compared to the base value of 100% in the first quarter of 2019 (when the EXW index began to be compiled), the ENplus® pellet market in Spain is beginning to recover some normal.
Since December 2022, and confirmed in the subsequent months of January, February and March 2023, ex-factory prices have been falling slowly but consistently after two months of contained increases that followed the extraordinary price hike that occurred in the summer from last year.
The highest average factory price of the year was €393,7/t in the month of November, with the most pronounced inter-monthly variation between August and September, when it became more expensive by around €60 per ton. Since then, the price has continued to rise more gently until the November peak, and has remained downward ever since. In the month of March, the price at origin was 309,6 euros per ton, equivalent to an EXW value of 176,6% compared to the base value.
This drop in the price at origin is taking place more notably in Europe, where the rise was also more pronounced.
With the heating season ending abruptly and early, the downtrend is expected to continue until the end of the summer. This price decline may be slower than that registered during the first months of 2023, since, although production costs have stabilized quite a bit in recent months, they remain high, especially that of raw materials.
To prepare the report, the factory price of a full truckload of ENplus® A1 certified pellets is taken as a reference within a 500 t contract, VAT not included. To prepare the EXW index, a telephone survey is carried out on more than 70% of ENplus® certified manufacturers.
The average price is obtained by statistically processing the price data, eliminating extreme values that are more than 3 times the standard deviation from the average. The quarterly price variation is expressed in %, establishing the average price corresponding to the first quarter of 100 as the base price of 2019%.
With this index, AVEBIOM intends to obtain objective data on the market trend in a more immediate way.