Charcoal production and sales: how lump charcoal is made

What is charcoal made from?

Grill charcoal is made from hardwood. In Europe that usually means oak, beech and acacia. Further south and overseas it means very dense woods such as Marabu, mangrove and Namibian hardwood.

Dense wood makes dense charcoal, and dense charcoal burns longer. That is why Marabu holds embers for up to about 8 hours, while beech, a lighter wood, gives about 3 hours and lights faster.

How charcoal is made, step by step

Charcoal is wood with the water and most of the gases driven out. To get there, the wood is heated in a closed kiln that lets in only a little air, so it chars instead of burning.

• Cut and dry the wood. Air-dried wood still holds 12 to 18 % water; wet wood wastes fuel and lowers the yield.
• Load the kiln: an earth pit or mound, a brick kiln or a steel kiln.
• Carbonise. The wood dries at up to 100 °C. At about 280 °C it starts breaking down by itself and gives off heat. The burner then pushes the whole load to around 500 °C.
• Cool it sealed. The kiln stays closed for days; air at this stage would burn the charcoal to ash.
• Sort and pack. Fines and unburnt pieces are screened out, and the charcoal goes into bags.

Why the kiln temperature decides the quality

The hotter and more even the finish, the more of the charcoal is pure carbon. FAO measurements show fixed carbon rising from 68 % at 300 °C to 86 % at 500 °C and 92 % at 700 °C. Charcoal pulled out too early is "soft burned": in one FAO sample it had only 47.6 % fixed carbon and 46 % volatile matter, against 84.2 % fixed carbon in a well-burned sample of the same wood.

Soft-burned charcoal is the charcoal that smokes, smells and burns out fast. Good commercial charcoal needs about 75 % fixed carbon or more; the Marabu we sell is at least 80 % and often 82 to 85 %.

Earth kiln or brick kiln: does it matter to the buyer?

Kilns differ in yield and speed. FAO gives typical yields of 15 % by weight for an earth pit and 20 % for a brick or portable steel kiln, and cycles of 20 to 30 days for an earth pit against 9 to 25 days for a brick kiln.

For the buyer, the kiln matters less than the result: charcoal that is fully carbonised, dry and even in size.

How to recognise good charcoal in ten seconds

Open a bag and check these five signs, which hold for every hardwood charcoal.

• Colour: shiny black all through, no brown patches or wood grain.
• Sound: two pieces knocked together ring almost like metal.
• Weight: dense, heavy pieces, not light and crumbly.
• Dust: few fines at the bottom of the bag.
• Smoke: once the bed is lit, almost no smoke and no smell of wood.

Charcoal sales: how wholesale buying works

Virovo Promet does not burn charcoal itself. We are a wholesaler: since 1990 we choose charcoal by exactly the signs above and sell it to restaurants, shops, distributors and importers.

Single bags are available at our Skopje office. Delivery usually starts from one pallet, and export goes by full truck (about 33 Euro pallets) or 20 ft and 40 ft container to Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and the rest of Europe. Bags come in 2, 3, 5, 10, 15 and 20 kg.

What sets the charcoal price

We do not publish a price list, because the price depends on the order. These are the things that move it:

• Wood type and grade: Marabu and Namibian cost more than beech or acacia.
• Piece size and how many fines are allowed.
• Bag size, and whether the bags carry your own print.
• Quantity: a full truck or container costs less per ton than one pallet.
• Delivery terms and destination.
• Season: demand peaks before Easter and 1 May, so order early.