IKEA pellets (Lasoviak) — who makes them and what number PL031 means

"IKEA pellets" sounds like a joke or a typo, yet it is one of the larger industrial pellets made in Poland. The producer is IKEA Industry, the group's manufacturing arm, in Stalowa Wola — next to the largest IKEA sawmill in the world. In shops you'll find it under the name Lasoviak or simply "IKEA pellets", with certificate number PL031.

Where it came from

The story is logical: the Stalowa Wola sawmill has run since 2014, cutting pine into timber for IKEA furniture factories in Poland and Slovakia, and producing enormous quantities of sawdust and chips in the process. Rather than sell them off, the group built a pellet line next door.

A report by the trade portal Przemysł Drzewny from November 2017 gives hard numbers from the launch:

• production started at the beginning of September 2017;
• two presses of about 10 tonnes an hour;
• capacity of around 60,000 tonnes a year;
• raw material: chips and sawdust from the production of 120,000 tonnes of pine timber a year;
• at the time of publication the EN+A1 and DINplus certificates were "in progress";
• sales markets: Italy, Germany, Denmark.

The same article notes that together with the Resko and Wielbark plants, IKEA Industry's total pellet output in Poland was around 130,000 tonnes a year — a scale comparable to Stelmet.

What sellers declare

The official IKEA Industry Stalowa Wola plant page was unavailable to our tool at the time of writing (HTTP 403), so the parameters below come from seller listings, with that caveat:

• producer: IKEA Industry, country of production Poland;
• certificate DINplus / ENplus A1, no. PL031;
• raw material: pine pellets, no admixtures;
• calorific value ≥ 5.3 kWh/kg, ash ≤ 0.35% (a seller's declaration — clearly better than the standard's thresholds of ≥ 4.6 kWh/kg and ≤ 0.70%);
• pallet 990 kg = 66 bags × 15 kg — a rarer variant than 975 kg, worth noting when converting to a tonne.

Sellers highlight one technological detail: pellets coming off the line never touch the ground, because even a little sand lowers the ash melting temperature and causes clinker in the burner. That's a "makes sense" argument, but not one a buyer can verify — the certificate number is.

Can you buy it at an IKEA store?

Not that IKEA. Pellets from Stalowa Wola do not sit next to the candles and Billy shelves — they go to fuel distributors, wholesalers and marketplaces (on Allegro the listing reads "Pellet Lasoviak (IKEA), class A1"), and a good share of production, per the 2017 report, goes for export. Don't look for it in the furniture store.

What we see at PelletRadar

We used to track an IKEA offer via the pellet4future marketplace, but we switched that shop off: it publishes only postcode-dependent prices that cannot honestly be converted to zł/t. So today the table has no live IKEA pellet price. When you find an offer, convert it yourself — pallet price ÷ 990 × 1000 — and compare with the A1 median from the table. Worth knowing: with 990 kg pallets sellers like to quote the "pallet price" next to competitors' 975 kg, which at equal price means 1.5% in your favour.

Before you buy

1. PL031 in the ENplus register — check validity and that the number belongs to IKEA Industry (how).
2. Pallet mass in the offer — 990 kg is a seller's declaration, not a law of physics.
3. Diameter — listings say 6 mm; if your boiler needs 8 mm, that decides it.

Sources

• Przemysł Drzewny — "Pellet z tartaku IKEA Industry", 16 Nov 2017 — production start Sept 2017, two 10 t/h presses, ~60,000 t/yr, sawmill since 2014, 120,000 t of pine timber, IT/DE/DK markets, ~130,000 t/yr total with Resko and Wielbark (Polish).
• Opsivo — "Pellet drzewny Ikea ENplus A1 DINplus" — producer IKEA Industry, certificate PL031, ≥ 5.3 kWh/kg, ash ≤ 0.35%, 990 kg / 66 bags. A seller's listing, not the producer's (Polish).
• Allegro — "Pellet Lasoviak (IKEA), klasa A1" — the Lasoviak trade name (Polish).
• IKEA Industry Stalowa Wola — plant page; returned HTTP 403 to our tool at the time of writing, so no figures are quoted from it.