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Bord na Mona’s International Business - Briquettes - Management Assessment Answer
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When peat is dried out it forms a semi-hard material that can burn to create thermal energy. Although similar to lignite and coal, peat has not had the benefit of being compressed by heavy water, soil or rock and thus is not compact nor dry in its natural form. Peat does not provide as much energy per tonne as lignite, coal, oil or other fossil fuels. Despite these disadvantages, as Ireland’s main, naturally-occurring fossil fuel it was widely utilised in the past. Traditionally in Ireland peat-turf has been harvested or extracted from bog-land by hand. The peat-turf was cut, using a spade, into a rough, rectangular shape called a sod. It was air-dried naturally on the bog during the summer months. This peat-turf was mostly used to fuel domestic fires and some home-heating systems. Up until the 1930s most peat-turf harvesting and extraction was local, with individual landowners annually extracting 1 – 3 tonnes of peat-turf from small plots of bog-land that they owned. During World War II large-scale hand-harvesting was carried out as peat sods were used as a replacement for coal. After the War hand-harvesting
Bord Na Mona
In 1934, a government body was established to develop turf production and this lead to larger-scale production and distribution. In the 1930’s it visited Germany and Russia to examine how peat was being harvested in those countries. Following World War II the government set up Bord na Mona (BnM) as a commercial, semi-state, company to maximise the use of peat in Ireland.
BnM first decided to replace hand harvesting with mechanised harvesting, both to reduce costs and improve efficiency. The company had purchased some basic harvesting equipment from Germany in the 1930’s and but in the aftermath of World War II there was no further equipment available. By the 1950’s BnM innovated and developed its own equipment to enable the extraction and harvesting of peat. This involved developing lightweight bulldozers to scrape off layers of vegetation to access the peat; modified tractors and ploughs to break up hard soil crusts; scrapers and millers to harvest the peat; and deep ploughs to access the water table and return used bogland to agricultural use. Peat was initially extracted as sods but soon almost all the peat was harvested as milled peat, scraped from the surface of the bog by tractor-towed pin-millers. Many of these machines are still widely in use.
Bord na Mona in 2018/19
BnM finds itself at another crossroads in 2018, A new CEO has recently been appointed to head Bord na Mona and spearhead its strategy. Environmental concerns are one of the key drivers of BnM’s strategy and the company wants all its energy to be generated from renewable sources before 2030 – although environmentalists have called for that push to be accelerated. At the same time, BnM needs to find new sources of fuel and other products and this will mean obtaining inputs from Ireland and overseas in future. The company now has several divisions and is in the process of developing plans for the next decade.
Plans for the next decade involve innovating its current products, processes and services, and developing its existing and new markets. The current state of the assets and capabilities of the organisation are:
1. Extraction:
2. Transport:
3. PowerGen:
4. Briquettes:
5. Bio-briquettes:
6. Coal
7. Horticulture/Garden Care:
8. Recycling:
Management Assessment Answer
TASK: Unlike many other developed countries Ireland has never had substantial amounts of fossil fuel energy sources and it has not used nuclear-power. For geological reasons the country has had a large amount of a substance called peat and has relied on it as its main form of fossil fuel energy in the past. Peat is made from the detritus of plants that have died and been stored and compressed by their own weight, and the weight of water lying over it, in shallow lakes over thousands of years. As climate has changed these lakes have dried out over thousands of years and formed into the bog. Bogland is made up of very wet soil which varies in depth from 3 to 30 metres. The resulting, saturated soil is called peat.
When peat is dried out it forms a semi-hard material that can burn to create thermal energy. Although similar to lignite and coal, peat has not had the benefit of being compressed by heavy water, soil or rock and thus is not compact nor dry in its natural form. Peat does not provide as much energy per tonne as lignite, coal, oil or other fossil fuels. Despite these disadvantages, as Ireland’s main, naturally-occurring fossil fuel it was widely utilised in the past. Traditionally in Ireland peat-turf has been harvested or extracted from bog-land by hand. The peat-turf was cut, using a spade, into a rough, rectangular shape called a sod. It was air-dried naturally on the bog during the summer months. This peat-turf was mostly used to fuel domestic fires and some home-heating systems. Up until the 1930s most peat-turf harvesting and extraction was local, with individual landowners annually extracting 1 – 3 tonnes of peat-turf from small plots of bog-land that they owned. During World War II large-scale hand-harvesting was carried out as peat sods were used as a replacement for coal. After the War hand-harvesting
Bord Na Mona
In 1934, a government body was established to develop turf production and this lead to larger-scale production and distribution. In the 1930’s it visited Germany and Russia to examine how peat was being harvested in those countries. Following World War II the government set up Bord na Mona (BnM) as a commercial, semi-state, company to maximise the use of peat in Ireland.
BnM first decided to replace hand harvesting with mechanised harvesting, both to reduce costs and improve efficiency. The company had purchased some basic harvesting equipment from Germany in the 1930’s and but in the aftermath of World War II there was no further equipment available. By the 1950’s BnM innovated and developed its own equipment to enable the extraction and harvesting of peat. This involved developing lightweight bulldozers to scrape off layers of vegetation to access the peat; modified tractors and ploughs to break up hard soil crusts; scrapers and millers to harvest the peat; and deep ploughs to access the water table and return used bogland to agricultural use. Peat was initially extracted as sods but soon almost all the peat was harvested as milled peat, scraped from the surface of the bog by tractor-towed pin-millers. Many of these machines are still widely in use.
Bord na Mona in 2018/19
BnM finds itself at another crossroads in 2018, A new CEO has recently been appointed to head Bord na Mona and spearhead its strategy. Environmental concerns are one of the key drivers of BnM’s strategy and the company wants all its energy to be generated from renewable sources before 2030 – although environmentalists have called for that push to be accelerated. At the same time, BnM needs to find new sources of fuel and other products and this will mean obtaining inputs from Ireland and overseas in future. The company now has several divisions and is in the process of developing plans for the next decade.
Plans for the next decade involve innovating its current products, processes and services, and developing its existing and new markets. The current state of the assets and capabilities of the organisation are:
1. Extraction:
2. Transport:
3. PowerGen:
4. Briquettes:
5. Bio-briquettes:
6. Coal
7. Horticulture/Garden Care:
8. Recycling:
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