The Swedish greentech company Mantex develops and sells industrial measuring equipment for the analysis of wood raw material in the paper and pulp industry and wood pellet production in the bioenergy industry. Now the company’s product Biomass Analyzer has received type approval from Swedish Biometria regarding the determination of dry matter content in wood chips and sawdust. The type approval means that it may officially be used as a measurement method to determine price and quality on the existing market for wood chips and sawdust.

The type approval follows the evaluation of the machine that Biometria and Skogforsk have carried out since last spring and means that the Biomass Analyzer has proven after extensive tests that it is able to correctly determine the dry content of sawmill chips and sawdust. According to Biometria’s terminology, the concept of dry content is used when it comes to this type of measurement, while the industry often uses the concept of moisture content, which Mantex also previously did. In practice, and when the machine is used by the customer, the choice of terms does not matter.

“This is very good news for us because it gives us completely different opportunities to market and sell it to potential customers. It proves once again that our proprietary and X-ray-based technology has great potential to contribute to the efficiency of the industries we address,” says Max Gerger, CEO of Mantex AB. 

Clear plan for commercialization The type approval is equivalent to a certification and is crucial for the continued commercialization and industrialization because it means that the machine is thus officially approved to determine price and quality on the market when used by third parties. The type approval is a seal of quality that also makes it easier for Mantex to extend the approval to also apply to the measurement of ash content and energy content, a crucial ability to be able to successfully sell the machine also to the large and growing bioenergy sector. The goal is that the type approval should also cover other types of wood material including root (branches and tops) which are common materials in the bioenergy sector in particular. The ambition is to complete it in 2024.

“The bioenergy market is the great potential for the Biomass Analyzer and the fact that we managed to obtain type approval for one parameter shows that our chances of type approval for the machine also for measuring ash content and energy content are very good,” says Max Gerger.

Even now, however, Mantex intends to intensify the work of marketing and selling the Biomass Analyzer to potential customers in the pulp and pellet industry, where the Swedish pulp mill Waggeryd Cell is already an existing customer. Waggeryd Cell uses a Biomass Analyzer to measure the moisture content of incoming sawmill chips in order to quickly and efficiently determine the price and quality of large and ongoing incoming deliveries. The origin and quality of the material varies greatly depending on where it comes from and the season. For each individual delivery, the moisture content therefore needs to be determined in order partly to determine the price of the delivery, and partly to control the process used when the wood raw material is to be converted into paper pulp. Existing methods for measuring moisture content are time-consuming and cumbersome and have a large element of manual work. The Biomass Analyzer is able to automatically and without contact determine the moisture content in a short time. 

Biometria is a member-owned company that operates within the forestry industry and whose task is to create security in the timber market by impartially measuring and reporting forest products in the business between forest and industry.

Skogforsk is the Swedish forestry research institute, funded by the forestry industry and the state.

For more information, please contact: Max Gerger, CEO – +46 70-012 35 72 or max.gerger@mantex.se

About Mantex

Mantex sells solutions based on a patented new X-ray-based measurement technology for biomass, which non-contact, automatically and in real time analyzes the material’s moisture content, ash content and energy content. This measurement data is used, among other things, to increase and improve production in paper mills, evaluate biofuel and make combustion more efficient in biopower plants.

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