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Renewing Russian wood utilization chains could bring multi-benefits
June 29 2010
Russia is modernizing its wood processing industry. Greenfield projects are challenging due to the lack of infrastructure. But upgrading the existing wood processing units and integrating them into one chain - from stump to end product - could open up a faster and the most sustainable way to improve the industry's production and overall competitiveness as well as bringing multiple local benefits. This kind of chain can be created in the Republic of Komi, North-West Russia, for instance. But this - as well as other existing chains in Russia - call for foreign investments.
Almost half of the world's softwood resources are located in the forested area of the Russian Federation, and more than half of European wood in Russia is found in the Russian Northwest. Only 40 percent of the cutting potential is used.
Although Northwest Russia has only about 10 percent of the forest resources of the whole Federation, it produces nearly 40 percent of the industrial roundwood, about half of the pulp, paper, and cardboard, nearly 40 percent of the plywood, and nearly 30 percent of the sawnwood in Russia. The demand of these products is strongly growing in Russia.
The roundwood supplied to wood processing units produces forest residues. These, together with by-products from mechanical and chemical wood processing industry - such as bark, sawdust and waste-wood - constitute a huge, under-utilized resource.
For example, according to an estimate by the Finnish Forest Research Institute, harvesting and mechanical wood processing alone produce about 30 million cubic meters of energy wood .
About 70 percent of the energy wood derived from harvesting, and consisted of non-industrial roundwood, unused branches and tops, defective wood from logging and spruce stumps removed after final felling, and 30 percent from sawmills and plywood mills, i.e. chips, sawdust and bark.
