South Africa Turns Invasive Trees into Green Fuel for Europe
Coega Biomass Centre says more than 90 percent of the wood came from land restoration clearing, a year after a similar cargo went to Japan.
Wood chips are loaded onto trucks bound for a processing factory in South Africa, photographed by Duduzile Ngwenya, co-author of a Stellenbosch University study of invasive tree supply chains. She and Romain Pirard found most of the wood cut to control invasions goes unused. (Photo Credit: D. K. Ngwenya / Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, CC BY 4.0, resized)
The Coega Biomass Centre is shipping 30,000 tonnes of wood pellets to Europe, with most of the wood coming from invasive trees cleared to restore land in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. That is according to commercial manager Thean Knoetze, who said on Friday 11 September that the pellets, made over the past year, were being loaded onto a ship at the Port of Ngqura.
“Every hectare cleared is a piece of land that gets a chance to recover,” Knoetze said, putting the invasive share of the wood in the cargo at more than 90 per cent. Most of it is bluegum, pine, casuarina, and acacia, which he said rank among the most damaging species in the region. He said the cargo will be used to make heat and electricity in place of fossil fuels, with a carbon saving he puts at 70 per cent for export customers.
Stewards of Nature, the centre’s sister company, cut the trees over the same year in and around Nelson Mandela Bay, Addo, and Humansdorp. Knoetze said Stewards of Nature’s water-impact pilot with the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials and WWF South Africa found that removing the trees restores water to the ground.
He expects no shortage of feedstock, citing the legal duty on landowners to remove invasive species and the centre’s own study of 20 years of supply within 152 kilometres of the plant. Of the 170 people he said keep the centre running, 95 work in the field for Stewards of Nature.
The plant had been in care and maintenance since 2014 when Britain’s Hive Energy, South Africa’s iLive Sustainable Development, and Dutch firm Partners for Innovation took it over in November 2020. Their goal was to recommission it within nine months, with Europe and Asia to form the base market for its pellets.
Partners for Innovation says the refurbished plant can make 120,000 tonnes of pellets a year. A first 10,000 tonnes of woodchips left the plant for a European client in September 2023, before its first pellets came off the line. The Dutch firm then aimed for a stable capacity of at least 5,000 tonnes of pellets a month, rising to 10,000 tonnes.
A chipper fed by an excavator sends chips from cleared trees into a trailer on a harvesting site in South Africa. Respondents told Stellenbosch University researchers they see invasions on the rise. (Photo Credit: D. K. Ngwenya / Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, CC BY 4.0, resized)
Romain Pirard and Duduzile Ngwenya, researchers at Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies, found last year that the law requiring landowners to clear invasive trees is rarely enforced. Many landowners see the trees as an asset to sell, they wrote in Bois et Forêts des Tropiques on 1 June 2025, after interviewing 30 people along the supply chain.
“These aspects illustrate that more trade-offs may be expected than win-win situations,” Pirard and Ngwenya state, noting that the sites most in need of clearing are not those where biomass is affordable to supply. Their respondents said deals with landowners fail in 10 per cent of cases, and that trucks carrying loads both ways could halve transport costs. The researchers also argue that large operators are better placed to stay sustainable, particularly exporters with a reputation to protect.
Commercial director Cas Snijders said the European cargo follows one of a similar size that went to Japan a year ago, but that the company is most keen to sell more pellets at home. He said a steadily rising carbon tax and the Gulf war are pushing up the cost of fossil fuel energy in South Africa, where the centre already supplies local companies.
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