Nationell

Egger Romania invested in resource saving technology and included recycling in the process. Up to 18% of the wood used in Romanian factories are recycling material. They process waste wood from furniture, pallets, wooden packaging materials, construction and demolition, that meets the requirements of the applicable directives and inspection systems. The material is also inspected visually and contaminated wood is separated for thermal use. In Romania, the EGGER Group runs its own recycling enterprises under the name Timberpak.

Suitable recycled wood is processed there and used for chipboard production. Large volumes of by-products and recyclable wood are generated by the plants. The company upgrades them into materials or uses them to generate environmentally friendly heat and electricity. With EGGER wood-based materials, the company established good environmental performance of the urban wood material. The objective of a closed loop material cycle is, on the one hand, to reuse all waste and by products as efficiently as possible, and on the other hand, to make substances used in the product available again for production at the end of the product life cycle, by implementing optimal recycling. The possibility of a closed material cycle should be taken into account even during the preliminary stage of product planning in conjunction with product design. Re-use of materials that were already used in products and have passed through a usage phase. The great challenge is to separate materials so that they become again source materials for new products. The collection division of recycled wood and the recycling installation of wood from Romania are the EGGER’s solution for a secondary, sustainable life cycle of materials based on wood.

The recycling wood quantities which were elaborated and recycled in 2016 by EGGER Romania replaced the potential of usage of 35,000 hectares of forests. The company has a unique wood recycling installation in Romania, dedicated and used exclusively for this purpose. At Romanian level, EGGER uses in average 17 % recycled wood for the production of panels based on wood in 2018. Last year, EGGER Romania reached a level of approximately 8 % and in the half of 2017, while in 2017 reach 15 % of recycled wood, and it was estimated a share of 17 % for the second half of 2017. The objective for 2020 is to recycle more than 150,000 tonnes of materials based on wood, annually, equivalent to more than 30 % of the volume of wood from forest works, according to Ioan Banciu, technical director of EGGER Eastern Europe division.

The strength grading of timber is mandatory for structural uses. Most of the sawmills in the area are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot acquire an automatic classification line because of the very high costs. For this reason it was decided to develop a new portable machine, with significantly reduced costs, which could be shared between the sawmill of the territory. The new grading machine was design starting from the technology ViSCAN of Microtec With these results, it becomes possible to introduce the machine strength grading among small/medium sawmills. Thanks to this new opportunity the companies can enjoy advantages both in terms of quantitative yields and efficiency in the classification. On the other hand, the portability of the machine is an interesting stimulus to its possible spread: neighboring sawmill could share the purchase or lease the equipment, reducing the amount of initial investment and operating costs. This sharing mode is well suited also to a non-continuous production of lumber. The machine was then set on the timber species present in the FMMF territory already used or potentially suitable for construction: ViSCAN-portable was officially certified as strength grading machine on March 2014. At the same date the settings for Douglas fir and black pine were approved, while for fir and chestnut they were approved on October 2014. Some local sawmills have already used the machine to grade their sawnwood for structural uses, but the VISCAN-portable has also been requested by other Italian regions, especially to grade chestnut timber.

iBioNet (Intelligent Bioenergy Network) is a spin-off of the University of Florence, established in 2015.
iBioNet supports the local communities through the development of renewable energies and guarantees the environmental and social sustainability. Furthermore, iBioNet promotes wood-energy supply chains, assists the enterprises and the local communities. iBioNet supports the energy production togheter with the maintenance strategy into the local framework. iBioNet promotes the biomass energy to reduce the GHG emissions and as drive force for the rural economy and forest management.

iBioNet pays particular attention to the growth of a sustainable economic model, compatible with the economic and ethical development of local companies, thanks to the coherence between the core business of "renewable companies", based on principles of environmental sustainability and efficient use of resources.

iBioNet’s services are:
•       Planning and design of biomass supply chains, through specific analyses and the development of web applications that allow an assessment of the sustainability of the new energy plants.
•      Biofuel Certification Service and emissions analyses aimed at certifying the quality of solid fuels (wood chips). In particular, iBioNet issues quality certification of solid biomass samples, according to the UNI EN ISO standard.
• iBioNet also produces and installs SensorWebEnergy (SWE) and Air Quality (AIRQ) remote monitoring systems and able to determine: the first the quantity and quality of biomass supplied to the plants; the energy eventually produced; the overall performance of the plant, weighed against climatic and electricity consumption data; whereas the second, weather data and emission value data of CO2; CO; NO2; VOC; PM10; PM2.5 . SWE and AIRQ data are sent in real time to the web platform (www.ibionet.eu) to be processed and made immediately available to the users.

Private foresters had a lot of quantitative data thanks to the data accumulated by the National Forest Inventory for more than 20 years, as well as information on the structure of the private forest thanks to the Ministry of Agriculture's survey in 1999. But they did not take into account the behaviour of forest owners. In 2009, the network for observing the behaviour of forest owners was launched by the CNPF and Fransylva, with the financial support of France Bois Forêt. The objective is to collect new information on the behaviour of forest owners, particularly regarding the management of their forests according to their forest area and the region where they live. In the surveys, the same behavioural trends of forest owners appear: sentimental attachment to their wood, environmental responsibility, heritage to be valued and source of economic income.

The main outcomes include so far:

• Surveys carried out by telephone to owners of more than 4ha of wood cadastral land with a duration of 15min
• 2500 people interviewed throughout France during the surveys
• Other surveys for specific studies at a more regional level (risk perception, climate change,...).  
• The results of the surveys make it possible to create new management tools for forest owners and new distribution media. They are also used to improve the advice of technicians in order to better take into account the expectations of forest owners and encourage them to mobilize their wood.

The project consists of creating a shared tool in the form of an online platform to facilitate the evaluation of supply plans and to limit conflicts of use from forest resources.
The tool integrates data related to the availability of the wood resource, taking into account harvests and past forest removals as well as the potential for additional wood energy and industrial wood harvesting. It thus provides an up-to-date view of the wood energy and wood industry resource at the departmental level.
In addition, the consumption of recent and planned biomass boiler is indicated in order to calculate the supply and demand balance for a territory.

Currently, the platform is tested and revised after feedback from users and experts associated with the project. It appears necessary to consolidate data on resource availability, biomass boiler consumption and other wood uses.

Data related to wood resources come from IGN inventories (National Institute for Geographic and Forestry Information), AGRESTE surveys (service of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food) and ADEME studies (Environment and Energy Management Agency).
With a single tool, it is possible to :
- monitor harvests and wood consumption at the departmental level,
- estimate the additional resource,
- use indicators of the capacity to mobilize the resource.
The platform provides summary tables on resource availability and a boiler consumption database. It allows users to monitor the evolution over time of biomass boiler and wood resource consumption.  
It also provides related indicators to estimate the strain on the resource. Users can simulate the impact of a new boiler installation on their territory.
This type of tool appears necessary and useful both for public bodies for the implementation of their policy, and for industrialists who wish to develop their activities.

Easily assess the sensitivity of forest soil to increased biomass harvesting. The owner or manager must enter soil characteristics into the digital or paper application, which indicates the sensitivity level for several mineral elements.

This tool allows more intensive forest management to be applied in areas where the risk of soil depletion is low. It is necessary to train forest owners to describe soil horizons.

This tool is complementary to the ADEME's guide "sustainable forest slash harvesting" of 2006 which indicates how to describe the soil (type of humus, soil texture, pH,...) and gives management recommendations according to the different types of sensitivity.
This application takes into account the pedoclimatic zone, humus type, pH, soil texture and prospective depth. The soil is described 25 cm deep. The result of the analysis gives 3 sensitivity levels: low, medium or high applied generally to the soil or for each mineral element (calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen).

WoodsApp is a map based forest information system, where user can utilize search engine that enables finding ideal forest compartment according to user-specific requirements. All Finnish-wide open forest stand data by Finnish Forest Centre is available in the system. Service works effortlessly on both mobile device or tablet, when you are searching suitable wood trade and silvicultural work units. WoodsApp brings significant benefits for timber buyers, forest service providers and forest owners associations. The service is an effective tool for searching timber trade or silviculture targets, the new customer acquisition of the forest service business and the purchase of forest property. You can see area, main tree species, development class, cutting potential, action proposals and other information related to the forest stand. In addition to open forest stand data, useful background and theme maps are available. These maps help in finding important natural habitats or evaluate cutting potential.

The Best Practice is addressing the challenge of soft terrains in harvesting.

It eases planning of harvesting locations and anticipating of harvesting of different forested areas. It considers only the static features of forest, not daily weather for example. However, bearing capacity in three different summer moisture condition classes is considered in the maps.

The material of the mainland Finland harvesting maps contains rasterized harvesting maps describing the terrain's bearing capacity. The capacity is classified in six categories. The maps tell when it is possible to go into the forest with the harvester. The material is free to use.

Spatially explicit GIS-method and a collection of tools to assess the energy wood biomass availability and transport costs at regional level to any given end-use location. In the process the technical harvesting biomass potential, local competing demand and the wood resource balance are assessed. The transport costs from the grid of supply points can be viewed as a function of transport distance. Also, different future growth and demand scenarios can be included into calculations thus providing a valuable decision support to investors of energy wood industry.

Most customer projects differ from every other project in some respect. Calculation methods need more or less adjustment.

Results from the analysis: 1. Numerical (GIS) maps of biomass potential for any given timber assortment, biomass demand and wood resource balance (e.g. balance of small trees, see picture above).
2. Graphs depicting transport costs as a function of distance. 3. Spreadsheets of the result data used for graphs. 4. Summary report of the results for the customers.

For more information, see the reference.

In drinking water protection zones (DWPZ) it may be necessary to transform forest stands which are not site-conform into more stable stands. During this process it can occur that the tree species which are not site-conform become a source of wood through the specific silvicultural transformation strategies. The amount of achievable wood is medium, as the timber-cutting activities have to be in line with the requirements for DWPZ. In Austria the main tree species in such situations will be Norway spruce (Picea abies). In DWPZ the amount of timber (wood) achievable through forest stand transformation strategies can be given but is limited as the guidelines for silviculture in DWPZ have to be applied. Hence no clear-cut activities are allowed there. Despite this fact it will be necessary to transform homogeneous spruce plantations into more stable forest stands. This process will release a limited amount of timber (wood). Cutting of Norway spruce in DWPZ which grows on sites which are not adequate for it in terms of forest ecosystem stability could yield medium amounts of wood. This process of cutting Norway spruce on sites of e.g. beech forest hydrotopes will last until the forest transformation is fulfilled. In all cases the guarantee of forest ecosystem stability is more important than the amount of timber yield. Hence the quantities of timber released in DWPZ will be limited in all cases.