BizWOOD Småland

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Project description

Småland is the center of the wood industry in Sweden, and its continued development is important for employment and profitable forestry. The wood industry in Småland mainly consists of small and medium-sized enterprises, many of which have limited opportunities to develop new markets and products. The softwood and hardwood industries have different structures and business models. The softwood industry has a strong and complete value chain and mainly works with standard assortments in large volumes and low margins. The sector is highly export-dependent, and new growth markets in Asia require special efforts to access. The hardwood industry, however, has previously been underdeveloped. Despite broadleaf forests making up 18% and high demand both nationally and globally, most hardwood has been used for pulp production and firewood in Sweden. Nearly all hardwood for the Swedish furniture and interior industry has been imported. The hardwood industry has lacked a functioning value chain—something this project has helped to change.

The project has supported wood industry companies in their development through:

• Establishing contacts with customer companies in China, Vietnam, and Japan for export development.
• Developing a sample product for aspen façade panels, including total cost calculations based on manufacturing, installation, environmental requirements, and maintenance.
• Developing methods for visual grading of Swedish birch into different strength classes, as well as providing data showing that machine grading makes it possible to sort birch into high strength classes for the production of glulam beams in birch or in combinations with spruce and birch.

Subproject 1 was carried out by Region Kalmar, subproject 2 by Träcentrum Nässjö, and subproject 3 by RISE.

Results

The project has shown that Swedish birch has higher bending strength, stiffness, and density than the softwood species currently used in Swedish industry. By developing new grading criteria, both visual and machine-based, the project has paved the way for birch to be used as structural timber, thereby broadening the raw material base of the Swedish forest industry. The results show that a large proportion of the tested birch timber can be classified in high strength classes, opening up new business opportunities and increased use of hardwood. This creates incentives to cultivate and process more broadleaf forests, benefiting the climate, biodiversity, and Sweden’s competitiveness.