Financial Analysis of the Transport of Wood Chips as an Option Among Other Solid Fiberbased Combustibles from the USA to Germany

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,5, The University of North Carolina at Wilmington (Cameron School of Business), course: Master of Business Administration, language: English, abstract: The European demand for wood chips and wood pellets is strongly increasing in the course of a new energy policy. This new policy limits the use of non-renewable energy sources to a maximum of 80 % in favor of a 20 % renewable energy mix by 2020. Besides the main renewable energy sources, wind and hydro, woody biomass shall contribute the largest part of the generation of heat and power. As North West European wood resources are not sufficient for this sudden demand, the region relies on imports from abroad. The large renewable wood resources of the North American continent could be used increasingly to supply woody biomass to North West European countries like Germany.

This thesis analyzes the profitability of US American exports of woody biomass to Germany. To see under which conditions the transport has its maximum rate of return, four trans-porting categories are investigated. Firstly, it will be analyzed whether the woody biomass should be compressed to pellets, secondly which type and cargo handling features the vessel should have, thirdly which charter conditions, harbors, trade terms, and routes should be taken and fourthly, which market conditions under current market prices for energy wood, variation of exchange rates and fuel oil prices are favorable, to improve the efficiency of the transport. Be-yond that, also the Canadian exports have been analyzed in order to benchmark the market leader against the USA.