LEAG’s refining operations and the pellet production facilities of LEAG Pellets GmbH can look back on a positive business performance in the past winter season. Sales of traditional lignite briquettes rose by 12 per cent in 2025 compared with the previous year, totalling 492,000 tonnes.
Sales of wood pellets increased by 13 per cent over the same period, reaching a total of 350,000 tonnes. ith production sites in Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic states, LEAG is now the second-largest pellet producer in Europe and is very much in line with the market trend. In Germany, pellet production by all manufacturers exceeded the 4-million-tonne mark for the first time in 2025. This is driven by customers with around 760,000 installed pellet heating systems.
“Of course, this year’s rather cold winter has contributed to the overall positive result,” says Matthias Vette, Head of Sales for LEAG’s refining business and Managing Director of LEAG Pellets GmbH. “However, the development in the pellet market also shows that the transformation in the heating sector is gaining traction. Consumers are increasingly seeking sustainable, biogenic alternatives to fossil fuels. We offer such an alternative with pellets, which are also an affordable domestic product that and, unlike oil and gas as we are currently seeing once again, are not subject to the sometimes extreme price fluctuations on global markets.”
He adds that, in terms of value for money, pellet heating systems are a competitive alternative to heat pumps and currently even offer the better carbon footprint. This is because the electricity used to operate heat pumps still includes a significant share of fossil energy sources.
Another major part of production at the refining site in Schwarze Pumpe is LignoPlus, a free-flowing industrial fuel derived from lignite, with output amounting to 802,000 tonnes.Although demand remains strong from sectors including the steel, cement and gypsum industries as well as pharmaceutical companies, the 2025 figures show an 11.4 per cent decline in sales compared with the same period last year. This is primarily due to uncertainty in the steel industry resulting from Trump’s tariff policy. Ultimately, this is also being felt at the refining site in Schwarze Pumpe.
Nevertheless, the free-flowing fuel dust remains a key product of LEAG’s refining business, although it will undergo changes as part of the coal phase-out and the transformation of the Lusatian energy company. “In the second half of the year, we plan to commission a plant that mixes finely ground wood dust and coal dust,” says Matthias Vette, explaining the plans for a new product called “Blend”. “It will initially have a ratio of 30 to 70 per cent. This means that, by using the biogenic admixture, our customers can reduce their carbon footprint by 30 per cent without having to undertake major modifications to their combustion systems or even replace them altogether. We anticipate that the blend ratio can be improved further in the future to increase the proportion of wood. And we do not intend to stop there. We are working intensively on technologies that could fully replace coal in future. The product would then be wood dust with the same parameters as today’s lignite dust.”
Alongside preparation for Blend production, which is scheduled for this year, another biogenic supplementary product is already coming off the line at Schwarze Pumpe. Currently still in trial operation, the first wood briquettes under the LEAG brand ‘Rekord’ are being produced in a press specially developed and engineered by experts from Freiberg. With the new pressing technology, in addition to traditional wood briquettes for domestic wood-burning stoves, other biogenic raw materials can also be briquetted, such as agricultural residues and sewage sludge. New high-quality biofuels can be an important alternative to fossil fuels, particularly for process heat in the manufacturing sector.
All wood-processing plants within the LEAG Group adhere to strict sustainability and compliance standards. They hold SBP (Sustainable Biomass Partnership) certification, which verifies hat the wood biomass processed at these plants is produced from responsibly harvested sources. Only wood residues and by-products from sawmills and timber harvesting, as well as damaged timber from sustainable forestry, are used as raw materials for pellet production. Procurement takes place regionally in the vicinity of the sites from controlled and verified sources. Suppliers are subject to strict audits and monitoring, including spot checks.
