Making more out of wood

 Monday, May 8, 2023

Timber transformation offers an ocean of opportunities to the wood industry despite forest damage challenges, and next week at LIGNA several associations will bring forth ways in which new potentials for the raw material wood arise in the context of the transformation towards a modern, resource-efficient and climate-neutral economy.

Under the motto “NRW – Making more out of wood”, the partners will present new and resource-efficient uses for the raw material wood at the joint stand of Wald und Holz NRW (Forrest and Wood NRW).

As part of the thematic focus “Potentials of hardwood for timber construction of the future”, the Center for Forest and Timber Management of Wald und Holz NRW will be showing the possible uses of the birch tree species in bonded and load-bearing timber construction products. This also includes silvicultural recommendations and maintenance concepts for the production of sawable birch logs in the reforestation of calamity areas. The variety of hardwood building products available on the market is increasing.

Under the motto “Forest Bioeconomy in Action”, the European Forest Institute (EFI) will present the cooperation of European regions as well as innovations and projects for a circular forest and wood-based bioeconomy. Here, too, wood use in construction is a particular focus.

On the basis of calamity wood dry storage facilities and the live demonstration of the cutting of sample logs, the material utilization potentials depending on the time of dying of the drought stands, the influencing variables on the log quality as well as possible risks during industrial cutting will be presented. Another focus of the course will be the wood technology properties of wood construction products and wood-based materials made from calamity woods.

Further topics of the NRW joint stand are the networking of planning, timber harvesting and logistics on the basis of digital twins within the framework of the joint project “Smart Forestry”.

The focus of the joint project “Intelliway” is on sensor-based monitoring of the condition of the forest road network and the planning of maintenance measures. Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods are used to analyze the sensor data, detect existing trail damage and identify damage classes for individual trail sections. Improved and sustainable production processes can significantly increase value creation and competitiveness in wood processing companies.

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