A quality product
Made to meet European quality specifications, Nature's Flame wood pellets are made from renewable pine wood sourced from New Zealand's extensive plantation forestry sector and the timber processing industry.For industrial and larger domestic users, the fuel is delivered in bulk to the customer's bunker. To service New Zealand's growing household market, Nature’s Flame packages the fuel in easy-to-handle 15kg bags. These are supplied either directly from its pellet plants (for large orders) or through our extensive retailer network.
How our pellets are made
The Nature’s Flame wood pellet plants receive large volumes of contracted pine wood residues from sawmillers and timber product manufacturers. This material is screened, ground, dried and compressed into wood pellets. Golden-coloured with a pleasant pine fragrance, the fuel is completely natural, being bound together by the lignin which naturally occurs in pine wood.Minimising the energy needed to dry and prepare the pine feedstock for milling is crucial to the economics of pellet making. Dry sawdust, shavings and off-cuts from kiln-dried pine is therefore the preferred raw material. However, because there is only a limited amount of this feedstock available, Nature’s Flame plants are designed to also be efficient in processing pine which has not been fully dried.
In particular, the plant at Taupo has been designed to process and dry wood residues that other wood industry participants such as the building and furniture industries do not use. In this way, Nature’s Flame has the potential to make a major contribution to New Zealand’s forestry sector by using a greater proportion of the forestry resource.
Pellet fires and boilers
The energy stored in wood pellet fuel is delivered either as hot air or hot water. Wood pellets are burned in modern pellet fireplaces and boilers which precisely control the combustion mix of air and fuel to maximise the heat delivered and minimise emissions. To find out more about these products and where they can be purchased, please contact our sister company Switch.Wood pellet fires produce just one tenth the harmful emissions of older wood burners and less than a hundredth of those from open fires. And because Nature’s Flame wood pellets have very low ash content, the equipment is easy to use and service. An additional benefit, for the user and the environment, is that the ash from Nature’s Flame wood pellets has been certified as organic by BioGro, New Zealand’s leading organic certification agency. Because customers can confidently apply this ash as part of a garden fertiliser regime, it does not need to be disposed of in landfills.
Nature’s Flame helped develop the joint Australia New Zealand standards (AS/NZS 5078:2007 and AS/NZS 4886:2007) for determining the power output, efficiency and emissions of wood pellet fireplaces. These allow buyers to better compare equipment and show if a fireplace has been through testing for New Zealand conditions.