On the road with Jenz

CATALAN engineer Ceferino Sánchez Alonso made a career move in 2007. He handed back the lease on the workshop he had built up in Barberà del Vallès and moved a few kilometres across the outskirts of Barcelona to a new industrial estate at Cornellà de Llobregat. He would still fit out wagons and semi-trailers for agricultural stock hauliers, but he had big ideas in mind for the larger premises he had taken on.

The prospect of producing heat and power from wood biomass had become fashionable in Europe in the early years of the new millennium, and forestry authorities in the Iberian Peninsula were as keen as anyone else to drive the technology forward. Ceferino was convinced that investment in the latest breed of mobile high-production woodchippers appearing in Central Europe would yield impressive dividends.

Working non-stop, the Jenz 700 was making rapid inroads into the stack of black poplar. The timber was drying rapidly, but still green enough to be sliced easily and uniformly by the blades of the chipping drum. If the trucks could pick it up and get it away before a torrential thunderstorm broke, it would sail through the moisture tests required before it is sold on the open market.

He could have named his new business ‘Sánchez Alonso Biomasa’, but it would have been lost in the depths of the alphabetical list. The numerous ‘A1’ businesses in the catalogues and on the websites might attract the first glance of potential customers, but Ceferino had other thoughts. One of the less common Italian versions of his first name, Zefferino, was fairly sure to put him at the bottom of any list. Prospective clients (whether they worked their way through a print copy or scrolled down a computer screen) would draw breath and take stock when the alphabetical roll-out of biomass contractors finally concluded and, at the bottom, Zefferino Biomass S.L.U. would be imprinted in their memories.

He was to be proved correct. Suitable machinery to supply the burgeoning demand for woodchips was indeed in short supply. In 2008, however, global financial catastrophe was to intervene. Spanish – and Catalan – businesses, if they were not bankrupted, were forced to make severe budget cuts. Livestock hauliers and farmers were in no position to replace their old wagons.

Organisations and businesses that had invested in biomass heat and power production, on the other hand, were desperate to obtain their woodfuel and reduce their dependence on the large power companies. Zefferino Biomass S.L.U. was a name they now knew, although they were all, according to Ceferino, keen to drive a hard bargain and most of them paid . . . eventually. A few went to the wall before the bill for the woodfuel and haulage was settled.

The plan to run a large fleet of mobile woodchippers the length and breadth of the Iberian Peninsula was put on hold. The investment in a state-of-the-art Jenz 700 trailed chipper unit was still made, although Ceferino Sánchez Alonso was reluctant to reveal whether he invested his own money from his trailer-building business in the purchase or obtained the support of his friendly Catalan bank manager. In the uncertain economic climate that prevailed, Ceferino considered it better to work at top production for one week and not get paid than to struggle on for a month or two and then find a huge black hole in the bank account.

Since its arrival, the Jenz chipper unit has averaged around 1,500 hrs/annum – a considerable work rate for a mobile machine covering such a huge area. Ceferino himself is normally behind the wheel of the MAN tractor unit and a colleague in the works van shares chipper operating duties. The van also provides transport for the operators to access overnight accommodation locations.

On the western borders of Catalonia, the desert lands of Spain’s Zaragoza province give way to low scrub of oak and juniper. Between here and the snow-capped high peaks of the Pyrenees, the region has a huge wealth of forest resource. In one of the hidden valleys, the Zefferino Biomass crew are producing sustainable energy from poorer-quality timber.

As the temperatures rose last summer, Ceferino and his workmate David Pujol were found up in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the winding C13 near the hamlet of Escaló. Snow closes the mountain pass a few kilometres further north for six months of the year, and the Catalan highway authorities took the opportunity in late spring to have local forestry contractors remove a stand of roadside black poplars in advance of an infrastructure improvement scheme.

On average, the Jenz 700 semi-trailer unit converts around 50m³/h of timber into saleable fuel. As the temperature rose into the high 30s centigrade, the Jenz chipper and the MAN tractor unit were working well. The Epsilon/Palfinger M180L loader was feeding in the raw material as fast as the big rotor could convert it into high-specification woodfuel. Late afternoon would see the convoy rolling south towards the next roadside timber landing.

David Pujol feeds a large poplar stem into the Jenz 700. Poplar, like softwoods, can run through the machine at butt diameters of 70 cm. The maximum diameter of stems processed by the Jenz 581 on the Scania wagon is less, so operators of harvesters and chainsaws need to ascertain that cut material is not oversize.

Ceferino normally markets the biomass himself and would arrange for hauliers to arrive at the finished site the following day. The services of a front-end loader and operator were arranged to coincide with the arrival of the trucks – usually from a local farmer, quarry business or civil engineering concern. A clear system of communications was essential in this respect; without it, people ended up in the wrong place and wagonloads of biomass could go astray.

Management of the chipping operation, in contrast, was a simple affair. The Jenz 700 and Epsilon/Palfinger M180L loader had shown their quality from the moment they arrived – so much so that within a couple of years another mobile chipping unit was on order. The new arrival was a Jenz 581 on a Scania R480 rigid four-axle body. The difference in format increased the efficiency of the business, especially for in-forest operations. The reliability of the systems was such that any future expansion would be with the acquisition of more machinery from Jenz GmbH.

Minor problems can always occur, of course. Even in mid-summer, the chipper operators taking their turns in the cabin on top of the Epsilon Palfinger’s kingpost could see the deep snows that still covered the 9,000-footers in the Pyrenees. Closer at hand, as they swung the grappleloads of poplar into the maw of the Jenz 700, the patches of snow on the lower peaks above them caught their eyes. Pleasantly cool up there!

The company van is not only available for personnel transport, but also accommodates maintenance tools and spare parts. Up on the road leading to the high ridges of the Pyrenees, its cargo included large volumes of bottled water. The air-conditioning unit of the loader’s cabin had ceased to function and the environment was becoming exceedingly warm for the operator.

Both Ceferino and David had suspected that the Epscab’s roof-mounted air conditioning unit was not working as efficiently as it should have been. They had arrived on site with extra supplies of bottled water on the Wednesday morning and, as if on cue, the cooling system soon gave up altogether. They agreed that half-hour shifts were called for and non-stop working of the machine might see another site completed and a further shift down the C13 by Thursday evening.

Ceferino was sure the weekly target would be achieved, Thursday’s hotel could be cancelled and the pair could share the driving back down to Barcelona in the van and arrive home in the early hours. David Pujol would have a well-earned day off and Ceferino Sánchez Alonso could manage the Zefferino Biomass business from the comfort of home.  Mind you, if the heat wave continued, Ceferino admitted he might be tempted to take his laptop and smartphone with him to a deckchair overlooking the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean and deal with business matters with a cool drink at hand.

Ceferino Sánchez Alonso set up his biomass processing business, Zefferino Biomass S.L.U., in 2007. His Jenz 700 semi-trailer unit arrived a couple of years later and propelled his business into the vanguard of Catalan biomass production. As a wagon builder he made sure his towing unit, the MAN D20, was well prepared for the job. A strengthened forward towing hitch was fabricated and forestry guarding added to protect the tractor unit’s vital parts.

Ceferino Sánchez Alonso is one of the four spokespersons of the Catalan Biomass Cluster – a not-for-profit organisation initiated by the Catalan Government’s Strategic Biomass Project. The current initiative was rolled out in 2014 and has a year left to run.  A recent conference at the Forest Science and Technology Centre in the town of Solsona saw 60 delegates arrive to give their views on the success of the project as it draws to a close.

Catalonia, it was noted in the introduction, is a heavily wooded region with 64 per cent of the territory officially covered in forests.  The 2 million ha of Catalan forests include the scrubby oak woods of the dry interior as well as the Mediterranean ‘garrigue’ found by the coast. Neither are included in the catalogues of timber-producing forests. Nor are the naturally occurring stands of conifers growing in the high mountains or in the region’s National Parks.

Nevertheless, the forests – both natural and plantation – where timber harvesting is deemed sustainable, are estimated to yield an annual growing increment of 3–4 million m³. Since 2014, it is thought that around 5,500 ha of forest has been brought back into silvicultural management. The latest figures reveal that 2,700 biomass boilers have been installed by business and domestic users, producing, it is estimated, 240 MW of power.