Athens Pellets

First post for me. I've been lurking for a while... Anyway I just got some Athens pellets in a barter. I don't have much $ invested in them thankfully since I don't see many positive comments regarding these pellets. Still, I am going to give them a chance. I took about 1/2 ton in a trade. The bags were all in good shape except for one was ripped open. That gave me a peek at the pellets. They look lighter in color than some of the photos I've seen of 'bad' pellets (they actually look like the picture on Athens website.) and the length of the pieces was also good. I didn't pour out a bag so I don't know if there are a lot of fines and I have not burned any yet. I'll post results when I do... I've got to get my stove installed first.
Is there a way to tell from the packaging when the pellets were manufactured?

there is no way to tell from the bag, but if they are light in color and over 1/2" long then they are the new and improved version. the bad ones were very dark, short and crumbly. the new stuff is not a bad product... kinda a middle of the pack pellet.

I've got six tons of maine woods pellets, not sure which plant, athens or corinth, hopefuly I don't get burned.

Here's what I got for Maine Woods....

They say Athens right on the bag:


Looks like I lucked out and got some from a later batch:

fyi...maine woods is Athens. corinth me. is a totally different company to my knowledge, but i will stand corrected if wrong.

myself and my dad both burned mwp's last year(5 ton each). the first two ton we bought were the early version as stated above...very dark in color,short, and crumbly.alot of people had trouble with them, but my harman p38 burned them and i had no trouble. when i went for the second two ton, they mix had been changed at the mill, and dave carr plant manager stated that the pellets were being run through a new dryer. these proved to run much better in my harman and more heat to boot.

there was a high ash conted from both series, but it was not a problem for me personally as i cleaned my stove weekly. i figured for the investment i made on the stove, i am going to clean it weekly and take care of it even if i dont have to clean it so much.

this year, i have all intentions of burning mwp's again. i live 11 miles from the mill and buy them direct there. dave carr and his staff are very awesome people to work with, and very forthcoming with the way they make their product, and are more than willing to give a person a tour of the operations though i have yet to make it over there to do so.

this is a new company, and i for one will give them the support and opportunity to go through the growing pains, in order to perfect their product.hope this info helps. p.s. i am not a salesman for mwp, just relating my personal experiance with their product.


mike

those pellets in the pic are from the new batch.

They look much better than the batch I tried.

I may pay them another visit someday.

jay

side by side old vs. new athens (new on left, old on right)

Here is what my Maine Woods pellets looked liked, Purchased July 2008, and here is the link of many unhappy pellet users. https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/24941/

I picked up 25 bags of Maine Woods in January 2009 and they were OK. Looked like the "new batch" in the pictures above as best I can remember. I still have a few empty bags to recycle and there is no date or batch number I can see.

I wonder how long bags are in the "food chain"? Are the pellets from a small regional plant sold and mostly burned over the six months after they ship? Nine months? Probably some retail stores have bags they got at the end of the spring and won't sell till the fall. And big places like Home Depot probably have them warehoused or maybe don't even take delivery from the pellet mills. I remember when just twenty or so years ago JIT ("Just In Time") manufacture and delivery was the buzz word. Pellets are a sloppier business, though.

JIT is a hard process to do in pellet manufacture. Mills operate 365 in order to make the yearly supply even if the demand isn't 365. You figure, some of the big mills can only produce 300 tons a day (or so). Seems like a lot, but its not. Thats barely enough to satisfy a fraction of the pellet pigs here ;-P .

pellet making can't do "just in time" they run by how much has been ordered and how much has sold, if pallets of pellets are just sitting around they stop production after a point, then when the extra has sold they start producing again. This is a big part of the reason there was a shortage last year, you don't want to have the capacity to produce way more than needed (to much initial expense) and when oil hit super high prices the suppliers couldn't keep up with demand.
My dad spent most of his career as a quality control engineer dealing with "just in time" management at factories, it takes more management and staff than you could imagine to get stock made just in time and delivered just in time. It takes ridiculous amounts of shipping pressure to get it just in time. at the big car companies they have fleets of airplanes that make a good living flying car parts from shippers to the plants to keep the assembly lines from shutting down, because someone underestimated the number of parts or the popularity of a certain color and they can get within hours of shutting down the whole line.
"Just in time" was really created to dodge the tax man, it doesn't make manufacturing easier, it adds expense, but since you pay tax on any inventory in stock (WHY?) the whole game continues.

Yes, I can see how JIT might be different in pellet manufacture from something like microchips in computer boards. The wide variation in demand for pellets and cost of raw materials from year to year has to be an obstacle to investing in a mill and keeping it running. I've seen JIT work in some places but it's got to be planned and executed almost flawlessly or costs go up. Done right, it reduced inventory costs. Done wrong and it got expensive fast.

As long as this company puts the words premium on the bag...I will not do business with them.
These pellets produce in all forms and batches way too much ash to be considered premium..
That said...if you don't mind doing the maintenance...and you like the sub par heat these pellets give off ...then by all means buy them. And when your walk gets icy in the Winter...you will like I did with mine...use them as traction builders on the slick walkways!

my OPB is much less effected by pellet quality, it burns a spadefull of pellets at a time, has a huge ash bin (40lb of pellets almost fit), and no glass, as long as it heats my whole house and 11 bags will still get me a week without maintenance or refueling, I'll be happy.

rowerwet said:

pellet making can't do "just in time" they run by how much has been ordered and how much has sold, if pallets of pellets are just sitting around they stop production after a point, then when the extra has sold they start producing again. This is a big part of the reason there was a shortage last year, you don't want to have the capacity to produce way more than needed (to much initial expense) and when oil hit super high prices the suppliers couldn't keep up with demand.
My dad spent most of his career as a quality control engineer dealing with "just in time" management at factories, it takes more management and staff than you could imagine to get stock made just in time and delivered just in time. It takes ridiculous amounts of shipping pressure to get it just in time. at the big car companies they have fleets of airplanes that make a good living flying car parts from shippers to the plants to keep the assembly lines from shutting down, because someone underestimated the number of parts or the popularity of a certain color and they can get within hours of shutting down the whole line.
"Just in time" was really created to dodge the tax man, it doesn't make manufacturing easier, it adds expense, but since you pay tax on any inventory in stock (WHY?) the whole game continues.

Click to expand...

I didn't know there was a shortage of pellets, at least not in my neck of the woods.

Pellets around here have always been available.
Was there a problem in your area?

I don't recall anyone on this forum saying that they couldn't find pellets to burn.

up here in the new england there was a shortage of pellets, some places worse than others last oct or so, they did come in but were scooped up faster than they came, I got mine at HD (2 ton) and the person in line behind me got none (out of 2 truckloads that morning), you had to call each morning to see if they had them, blue seal would put you on a list and were running a month behind. look at threads from last fall and you'll see how crazy it was.