Does this make sense?

[dewaldf.carstens]

The OP seems to have an opportunity to get a pretty good business going here, but I'm not sure he has good plan how to get his product from the farm to the market, and make a decent profit in the process. With a good business plan and proper strategy it would seem investors would be lining up for a piece of the action. So I think the OP should focus all his efforts into coming up with a new plan that he can market/shop to potential investors. Hopefully he has spending his time lately putting more research into efficient firewood processing - regardless of equipment costs. If he can show a plan to an investor where he can return 20% per annum on the initial investment, then obtaining financing for the proper equipment would be much easier. Otherwise, he needs to think smaller and get his margins up to where he can save enough of his own capital to expand the business as time goes on.

And the OP hasn't mentioned how much of his own money he has tied up in this business. As far as I can tell, he only has maybe $70,000 in equipment, and probably half that if he bought the tractor used. That isn't much money to come up with if you doing $300,000 worth of business a year, and possibly much more. Why does the OP even need an investor if he only requires $35,000 to get things up and running?

CJ,

Thanks for the advice. Yes I am busy updating my 2 year business plan. I have put much thought into this business and we have learned a lot over the last 6 months. I have decided to upgrade from what we had and go the Rapido Loco 20 way, $60k. Only because the Blue Gum wood is extremely abrasive on chainsaws. This will also give me some spare capacity for the next 2 or 3 years.
We need a winch again so $6k.
We have a nice Ford 6600 with loader.
I may get a dedicated tractor for winch $15k.
I recon we rent a truck long term for $100 per day initially. We use transporters now to deliver product to wholesale customers, 15 - 35 ton loads of firewood. If we take this on in house and get paid for the transport at same rate as contractors, we may distribute our own product for free.

We have 2 customers that will buy enough to cover more than finance.
Customer A 40 ton per week wet wood, $1800 per week - $7200 /month
Customer B take 5500 ton per year @ $ 23k per month average. So $25k per month. Our overheads is less than $10k per month, so this does make sence though.
Finance on $100k over 4 years should be $3.5k per month approx.

These2 customers make up less than 50% of next years indicated orders.


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[dewaldf.carstens]

CJ,

Thanks for the advice. Yes I am busy updating my 2 year business plan. I have put much thought into this business and we have learned a lot over the last 6 months. I have decided to upgrade from what we had and go the Rapido Loco 20 way, $60k. Only because the Blue Gum wood is extremely abrasive on chainsaws. This will also give me some spare capacity for the next 2 or 3 years.
We need a winch again so $6k.
We have a nice Ford 6600 with loader.
I may get a dedicated tractor for winch $15k.
I recon we rent a truck long term for $100 per day initially. We use transporters now to deliver product to wholesale customers, 15 - 35 ton loads of firewood. If we take this on in house and get paid for the transport at same rate as contractors, we may distribute our own product for free.

We have 2 customers that will buy enough to cover more than finance.
Customer A 40 ton per week wet wood, $1800 per week - $7200 /month
Customer B take 5500 ton per year @ $ 23k per month average. So $25k per month. Our overheads is less than $10k per month, so this does make sence though.
Finance on $100k over 4 years should be $3.5k per month approx.

These2 customers make up less than 50% of next years indicated orders.


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This is what we produced in 10hrs. We loaded this truck, 35 ton, and there was about 4 ton left of the heaps.

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[dewaldf.carstens]

The OP seems to have an opportunity to get a pretty good business going here, but I'm not sure he has good plan how to get his product from the farm to the market, and make a decent profit in the process. With a good business plan and proper strategy it would seem investors would be lining up for a piece of the action. So I think the OP should focus all his efforts into coming up with a new plan that he can market/shop to potential investors. Hopefully he has spending his time lately putting more research into efficient firewood processing - regardless of equipment costs. If he can show a plan to an investor where he can return 20% per annum on the initial investment, then obtaining financing for the proper equipment would be much easier. Otherwise, he needs to think smaller and get his margins up to where he can save enough of his own capital to expand the business as time goes on.

And the OP hasn't mentioned how much of his own money he has tied up in this business. As far as I can tell, he only has maybe $70,000 in equipment, and probably half that if he bought the tractor used. That isn't much money to come up with if you doing $300,000 worth of business a year, and possibly much more. Why does the OP even need an investor if he only requires $35,000 to get things up and running?

The 2 local towns, less than 15 miles from site, we just do deliveries on Saturdays with tractor.
The truck we hire for our wholesale customers.

The truck with the bulk bags we now use for domestic home deliveries. We get these fertilizer bags free as the farmers don't use them again. We can get 20 000 plus per year for free. 3 of them is about half a cord. They load easy and offloading is just as quick.

I recon a flat bed truck and large trailer with a truck mount crane is a very good option for home deliveries?

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[dewaldf.carstens]

That's what makes this one interesting.
Not only would it yield carbon credits from the mass amount of standing timber but it's a double bubble as the wood That would be otherwise be burnt now qualifies as 4,000,000 tonnes of wood is not going into the atmosphere. Ef (emissions factor) on amount given is about $15,000,000 on a short ton 10% on a metric tonne 16,5

Hi is there schemes out there where I can find more information about this. In SA carbon credits are not mandatory yet, but in EU it is. I have some experience with PV Solar and methane projects that were selling their credits to EU. That actually funded the entire project.

What we do is sustainable as the tree sprouts again, we look after it, prune, and harvest the same tree in some years to come. This is the deal we have with the farmers, thus we will do all the maintenance for those trees, free of charge.

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[Westboastfaller]

Hi is there schemes out there where I can find more information about this. In SA carbon credits are not mandatory yet, but in EU it is. I have some experience with PV Solar and methane projects that were selling their credits to EU. That actually funded the entire project.

What we do is sustainable as the tree sprouts again, we look after it, prune, and harvest the same tree in some years to come. This is the deal we have with the farmers, thus we will do all the maintenance for those trees, free of charge.

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IDk..you can likely find some films prehaps on YouTube that would give you a good basic understanding. I know I watched a really good one about 5 or more years ago. I can give you a basic summary.

Things change all the time, We here in British Columbia started with a 6% reduction in 2012
2016, 18%
2020, 33%
By 2050 It will be an 80% reduction.

So keeping a metric ton of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases which emission factors (ef) equal the same; out of the atmosphere for a one year period = 1 Carbon credit.

To buy a carbon credit is a permit to emit 1 tonne of CO 2

Example:

Two oil refineries,
we'll refer to then as factory A & B

Factory A spends 5 billion on the emissions upgrade and has earned carbon credits.
Factory B didn't do the upgrade but can buy the carbon credits off of factory A.
They can buy out of country too.

Alberta Canada was the first to put a price on a metric tonne of emission.
I believe it was $30. 00 CND
I believe now it's about $8.60 USD
There has been great fraud in the system.
It just wasn't managed closely at all.
Their is claims the value has dropped 90%
There is a new film called "Carbon Crooks" speaking of which Amazon have it for just 295.00. Lol

Some people just made off like bandits.
There was a group that sent so many water purifiers down to Kenya? Genya? Africa on the premises everyone was burning wood to pre boil the water but in actual fact just 25% were.

This story was on the film I watched and is taking place in India involving a company that dose funeral pyre's.
They improved the system by adding a hood that made it burn way more efficiently. They had earned 750 million at that time.

When a deal is make as in selling trees for CC. It's a 100 year contract (Lease)
You can still harvest your rotations or take some for firewood. There would just be a reduction.
They will test the soil content for carbon as well timber averages are gathered and measure with a carbon calculator to reach the correct amount of CO2 the trees will process per year.
If it was to burn down then I believe it would be up to the owner to replant.



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[Westboastfaller]

That's what makes this one interesting.
Not only would it yield carbon credits from the mass amount of standing timber but it's a double bubble as the wood That would be otherwise be burnt now qualifies as 4,000,000 tonnes of wood is not going into the atmosphere. Ef (emissions factor) on amount given is about $15,000,000 on a short ton 10% on a metric tonne 16,5

I don't have the EF formula. Burning a short ton = 3812 pounds CO2. It about perfectly equals 2 CC to metric tonne. I missed a step, the figure would be four times those figures above.
I guess you may have to prove how much could go to market per year?... IDK