One thing you couldn’t call this job is run-of-the-mill. Last week, for instance, I found myself hurdling logs in a Finnish forest. I was fleeing to the air-conditioned comfort of a harvester cab to escape outsize horseflies intent on supping a half pint of blood per bite.
This experience was actually part of a demonstration by Finnforest of the emphasis it places on adding value to timber. The process starts at the stump in the forest, with the harvester operator undertaking the initial grading to ensure optimum use of the material; marking this log for sawn timber, that one for laminated veneer lumber, or pulp and so on.
Ultimately, of course, it’s Finnforest’s ambition to wring every last drop of profit out of its wood resource on a long-term basis. Further down the line, that means continuing to push back the technical boundaries in engineered timber product development and, for the construction sector in particular, supplying not just single items in isolation, but inter-related families of wood products that can be marketed as the complete ‘solution’ for the customer’s requirements – plus advice on how to use them.
As our sawmilling supplement shows, this, or something like it, is also the approach that UK and Irish timber suppliers are looking to follow to make maximum use of their growing raw material base. Individual companies and organisations discuss the progress being made into new value-added areas and the significance they attach to liaising with end users to ensure products are tailored to their needs.
They also stress the importance of both generic marketing and providing the information required ‘to make it easier for people to design in and specify timber’.
The bottom line is that there’s nothing run-of-the-mill about wood, and through product development and promotion, the market should be made aware of of the fact.
