We wrote this letter to our customers and email subscribers...
Why we’re increasing our prices
In effect from Monday 1st March
We're on an important mission to make fuel sustainable, and we want to be around in 10, 20 years to see it through. We also want to be open and transparent with you because we recognise that you're on this journey with us. So you deserve to know why we're increasing our prices.
Let's start with what we do...
Sure, we sell firewood.
But scratch an inch deeper, and you'll see our uncompromising focus on sustainability, community, product quality, service, support, and reliability. And we have to deliver on all those promises at a fair and reasonable price.
When you shop at Ecofuel, THIS is what you're buying into.
We’ve also invested a lot in growing and being even more efficient. We've grown our service team, hired more drivers, added vans, opened up in Dublin, added new products, and improved others. We've added new systems and software to handle everything from accounting and HR to route-planning and delivery. We do all this to keep getting better, and we've come a long way in a year.
The world changed a lot in 2020. As the world spends more time at home, we all need more fuel to keep our homes warm and, well, homely.
And it's not just us...
Ecommerce was always growing, but in the last year, that trend accelerated to levels not expected until about 2030. And now that more people have experienced the convenience of home delivery, there's no going back.
Because of all this, several factors have compounded to drive up our costs. There's a global demand for shipping containers, pushing costs up throughout supply chains.
We've been negotiating hard with our suppliers, who have been increasing prices across the board. For example, we now pay 30% more than we did a year ago for one of our core briquette products. Then there's delivery - running our fleet of vans is essential for providing the level of service we demand of ourselves. Sometimes, we also use external couriers to balance capacity and speed up deliveries to more remote areas, and we've always subsidised those costs.
The last thing we want is to push up our prices, and so far, we've absorbed all these costs ourselves.
Actually, increasing prices is the second last thing we want.
The real last thing we want is that we can't afford to do what we do. We believe this mission is too important. And to be ecologically sustainable, we need to be financially sustainable.
So we've decided to make some small changes.
First, a small price increase for most of our products (the average price increase is 6%). For CityBags, there's no change.
Second, a new flat-rate shipping fee for delivering pallets. With escalating delivery costs, free shipping was like death from a thousand cuts, so we'll add a small (still heavily subsidised) delivery charge of €30 per pallet.
On the other hand, we're increasing the bulk discount you get when buying briquettes by the pallet. This should help offset some of the changes for you.
Of course, we understand that nobody wants higher prices, so we're not taking this decision lightly. Just know that we've spent a lot of time thinking through all this and how best to keep doing our thing.
Thanks for being a part of this journey with us.
It means a lot.
