• Forestry
• Society
• Environment

Reaching the end-user with biomass vending machines

BRANCHES was a H2020 “Coordination Support Action” project, that brought together 12 partners from 5 different countries. The overall objective of BRANCHES was to foster knowledge transfer and innovation in rural areas (agriculture and forestry), enhancing the viability and competitiveness of biomass, supply chains and promoting innovative technologies, rural bioeconomy solutions and sustainable agricultural and forest management. The Practice Abstract presents the story of Pellet Drive from Italy, a company that offers technical solutions in the biomass vending machines field. Their system is very flexible, because it can be adapted to any products coming in discrete units (packs, bundles, bricks etc.), which allows extended service when the winter season is over and fuel demand dwindles. Most of the cost is in the software, and users can multiply their own selling points at the small incremental cost of the simple hardware. Nevertheless, the Pellet Drive box is nice looking, features a number of advanced security devices and sports a bright monitor for advertising the product – or for selling ads to other businesses and integrating the revenue stream.