Stelmet pellets (Olimp and Lava) — producer, certificate PL 001, parameters

Stelmet is a company most Poles know for fences and garden sheds, not fuel. Yet its plant in Zielona Góra is the largest pellet producer we have verified in Poland, and the holder of ENplus certificate PL 001 — the first Polish number in the scheme. Two brands are sold under that number: Olimp and Lava.

Who they are and where the wood comes from

Stelmet S.A. is based at ul. Gorzowska 20 in Zielona Góra and describes itself as a leading Polish and European manufacturer of wooden garden architecture. Pellets began as a way to use the by-product of that business: the pellet plant stands next to the garden-timber plant, which is its steady source of sawdust.

A few figures from the Zielona Góra plant's own website:

• production capacity of 144,000 tonnes of pellets a year;
• around 600,000 m³ of wood processed annually;
• raw material secured by a long-term contract with the State Forests (Lasy Państwowe);
• 16,000 trucks dispatched from the plant in the previous year.

The raw material is exclusively pine and spruce — stated both by the plant's site and by the Olimp bag label at Bricomarché ("sosna, świerk"). That matters for the pine-or-oak question: Stelmet makes no hardwood pellets.

A technology choice that affects ash

The plant's website describes one technological decision explicitly: the drum dryer was replaced with a belt dryer running at only 100°C. The producer's reasoning: a higher temperature scorches the sawdust and degrades lignin — the natural binder that holds pellets together without added glue. For the boiler owner that translates into less crumbling and less dust in the bag.

The producer also stresses that Olimp was the first pellet in Poland to obtain ENplus A1 certification, and that Olimp pallets have white UV-blocking hoods so the pellets don't yellow in the sun.

Olimp and Lava — how they differ

Both brands carry the same PL 001 number and both are class A1. A distributor's guide from Zielona Góra (SUEK Polska, listed below) positions Olimp as the flagship "when uncompromising top quality counts" and Lava as the variant with an "excellent price-to-performance ratio", and notes that besides ENplus A1 Stelmet pellets carry DINplus and FSC.

To be candid: neither the plant's website nor the Bricomarché listing gives numerical parameters (ash, calorific value) for either brand. So we quote only what the A1 certificate itself guarantees: ash ≤ 0.70%, calorific value ≥ 4.6 kWh/kg, durability ≥ 98% — the thresholds set out in A1 vs A2. If a seller quotes specific figures for Olimp or Lava, they come from that seller's own description, not from any producer material we have seen.

Where to buy and how to check the price

Stelmet doesn't sell pellets from its corporate site — it points to the epellety.pl shop with free delivery. Otherwise:

• Olimp in 15 kg bags is stocked by the Bricomarché chain (bag 39 × 15 × 55 cm, EAN 5900886256230);
• Lava on 975 kg pallets appears at fuel distributors and on marketplaces.

What we see at PelletRadar: we used to track a Lava offer via the pellet4future marketplace, but we switched that shop off — it publishes only postcode-dependent prices, which cannot honestly be converted to zł/t. So today we have no live Stelmet price in the table. If you're buying Olimp or Lava, convert the price yourself: bag price ÷ 15 × 1000, or pallet price ÷ its mass × 1000 — and compare with the A1 median in the table.

Before you buy: three things to check

1. PL 001 on the bag and its validity in the ENplus register — how to do that is in the certificates article.
2. Pallet mass in the specific offer: distributors pack differently, and 975 vs 1050 kg is 150 zł/t at the same price.
3. Bag condition on delivery — fines at the bottom and broken pellets point to bad transport, not a bad producer.

Sources

• Zielona Góra — PolishPellet (Stelmet), "O firmie" — 144,000 t/yr, 600,000 m³ of wood, State Forests contract, 100°C belt dryer, Olimp as the first ENplus A1 in Poland, 16,000 trucks (Polish).
• Stelmet — corporate site, Pellet tab — company profile (garden architecture), referral to the epellety.pl shop (Polish).
• Bricomarché — Pellet OLIMP EN plus A1 15 kg Stelmet — composition "pine, spruce", producer Stelmet S.A., ul. Gorzowska 20, 65-127 Zielona Góra, bag dimensions (Polish).
• SUEK Polska — "Pellet Stelmet Zielona Góra: jakość, ceny, gdzie kupić" — ENplus number PL 001, DINplus and FSC, Olimp/Lava positioning. A distributor's guide, not the producer's (Polish).