Who We Are
Ayo Biomass makes 400,000 metric tons of industrial wood pellets a year at two plants in central Vietnam. We produce every tonne we sell. Our chain of custody is therefore a single document we hand over, rather than a record assembled from other people's paperwork.
We started in 2018 inside a family of businesses that already worked timber: furniture and wood chips, with our own factories in both. That is where the feedstock comes from. The offcuts, thinnings, tops and sawdust those industries leave behind are the raw material for a pellet. No tree is grown to be burned, and we do not bid against the furniture trade for fibre. That is the claim a utility buying under EU or Japanese rules has to defend to its own regulator.
- Headquarters: Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam
- Established: 2018
- Export Markets: Europe, Japan, New Zealand and emerging Asian markets
Why Customers Choose Ayo
Certification you can check
FSC Chain of Custody and Controlled Wood under PBN-COC-056308, two PEFC group forest management certificates covering M'Drak district, and SBP-08-23. Each certificate is audited annually by the body that issued it. Every registration code is published on our sustainability page so a buyer can look it up in the certification body's own database.
A plant that measures itself
Both sites run on the Koidra intelligent operations platform. Moisture and durability are measured inline during production, quality parameters refresh every 60 seconds, and deviations raise an automated alert. That is unusual for a producer our size, and it is what holds quality steady as contract volume grows.
Reliable supply
Two plants with direct port access keep shipment dates firm. We load at more than 10,000 MT per day, with a record of 18,000 MT in a single day.
Geography doing the work
Acacia reaches harvest here in 5 to 6 years at 20 to 30 MT/ha/yr, against decades in North America and northern Europe. The plants sit close to the ports, and the ports sit close to the buyers. Both facts show up directly in delivered carbon intensity.
Growing the certified forest area
We are building Group Forest Management certification with smallholder households and afforestation units in Dak Lak and Gia Lai. It expands the certified forest area in Vietnam rather than competing for the existing supply, and it puts the certification premium in the hands of the people managing the land.
Our Leadership Team
Kenneth Tran, CEO, Ayo Biomass Co., Ltd.
Kenneth Tran is the founding CEO of both Ayo Biomass in Vietnam and Koidra in the USA. His expertise lies in the intersection of software and data-driven technologies, industrial automation, energy production, and manufacturing innovations.
In 2020, Kenneth founded Koidra, a company headquartered in Seattle and specializing in AIoT-based industrial control and optimization for process manufacturing. Before Koidra, Kenneth worked as a Principal Applied Scientist in Microsoft Research's Machine Learning group.
Kenneth earned a Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
Bang Le, Vice Director, Ayo Biomass Co., Ltd.
Bang Le is the Vice Director in charge of Finance at Ayo Biomass with over 25 years of experience in the woodworking industry.
She is a co-owner of Phuoc Hung JSC, a furniture manufacturer founded in 1998, where she has played a key role in financial and strategic management.
At Ayo Biomass, Bang oversees financial strategy and governance, bringing her deep industry knowledge and leadership to support the company’s sustainable growth.
Trang Do, Sales Manager, Ayo Biomass Co., Ltd.
Trang Do is Sales Manager at Ayo Biomass, where she has worked in Sales and Sustainability for over six years. She supports international partnerships and customers worldwide while also managing compliance with sustainability certification standards such as SBP, FSC, and PEFC.
Trang graduated from the National Economics University with a degree in International Business.
John Swaan, Adviser, FutureMetrics
John Swaan is an Adviser at Ayo Biomass and is widely known in the industry as “the grandfather of wood pellets.”
He founded Pacific Bioenergy Corporation in Canada in 1994 and, in 1998, organized the first trans-ocean shipment of pellets from Western Canada to Sweden, which opened the global industrial pellet market.
John later served as Executive Director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada and has been a senior consultant with FutureMetrics since 2013. At Ayo Biomass, he provides strategic advice drawn from decades of pioneering experience to support the company’s sustainable growth.
Our Commitment
We believe sustainable biomass is essential for Asia's energy transition. Our operations support local forestry communities, create jobs, and provide a renewable energy source that reduces dependence on fossil fuels.