Europe’s timber industry training and research bodies have launched an organisation to co-ordinate their training, education and research activities and ultimately replace them.
InnovaWood, launched in Brussels on May 17, brings together Eurofortech of Ireland, Euroligna based in Spain, Germany-based Eurowood, and Eurifi of Brussels. The new Dublin-based organisation – headed up by president Dr Jos Evertsen, manager of innovation partnerships at Eurofortech – will act as an umbrella organisation for the four networks which specialise in different areas of forest product industry training, education and research and development.
InnovaWood’s role will be performed initially by Eurofortech, the only one of the four networks to have its own full-time secretariat. However, within six months InnovaWood is expected to have its own full-time secretariat.
UK trade associations TRADA and the Institute of Wood Science will plug into the new organisation via their respective affiliations with Eurowood and Eurofortech.
Eoin Sweeney, co-ordinator of InnovaWood, said: ‘There is a feeling that this is the right time for a single integrated operation that offers an improved service delivery mechanism at the European level. We think that InnovaWood will generate more activity than the sum of the four networks.’
Innovation forums are shortly to be set up by InnovaWood to act as industry focus groups for various aspects of education, training, research and development. They will replace the four existing networks.
‘They will be the contact points for industry to express priorities and will eventually subsume the networks. Eventually Eurofortech and the other networks will disappear,’ added Mr Sweeney.
One of InnovaWood’s first roles will be to oversee Xyloreach, a project part-funded by the EU that is designed to pool the conclusions of the past 10 years of forest industry research. The results of the project will be available on the internet.
