BALTPOOL starts publishing the woodchips product index

Starting from 19 March, to ensure the transparent and competitive trade, BALTPOOL, the Energy Exchange operator belonging to the EPSO-G group, will publish the BALTPOOL WOOD CHIPS SPOT LITHUANIA (BWCS Lithuania) price index.

The purpose of the BWCS Lithuania index is to enable market participants to easily evaluate the current situation in the biomass market and biomass price changes and trends. The index will become a convenient tool suitable for a variety of purposes, including bilateral contract pricing, company internal transaction pricing, market research, etc.

“Our goal is to provide all market participants with transparent and equal conditions to trade in biomass and timber and to compete openly. The formation and publication of the woodchips index will contribute to the achievement of this goal,” said Andrius Smaliukas, director general of BALTPOOL.

The index will be calculated based on all one-week transactions for woodchips concluded in the Exchange. The index will be calculated and published on a weekly basis, immediately after completion of a trade auction (the second business day of each calendar week).

The reliability of the BWCS Lithuania index and its ability to accurately reflect the market changes are ensured by the scope of transactions of purchase and sale of biomass recorded in the BALTPOOL biomass exchange: in 2017, over 410,000 TOE (tonnes of oil equivalent) of biomass was sold in the biomass exchange, and 42.4% of the concluded transactions accounted for one-week transactions. According to data from the National Commission for Energy Control and Prices, in 2017, regulated market participants purchased 97% of biomass via the Exchange.

We invite market participants to consult the specification of the index here: https://www.baltpool.eu/en/energy-exchange-documents . BALTPOOL will order an independent audit of the index value calculation and publish the audit report on an annual basis.

About BALTPOOL

UAB BALTPOOL is the operator of the Lithuanian Energy Exchange having the right to organise trade in biomass and other products. In 2018, BALTPOOL was appointed as the administrator of the trading system for timber produced in State-owned forests. The company is also an administrator of the funds of Public Services Obligations (PSO), which performs the functions of collection, payment and administration of PSO funds.

The Energy Exchange by numbers in 2017:

• The number of transactions grew by 20% (to 5,088).
• The trade turnover increased by 12% (to EUR 62,830,000).
• The Exchange fees decreased by 13% (to 0.61 EUR/toe).