2017 International Forest Industries Magazines April May 2017 | Page 6
ISSUE 56 APRIL / MAY 2017
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Editorial Director
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Editor
Chris Cann
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Editorial Board
Dr Patrick Moore – Chairman and Chief
Scientist of Greenspirit (Canada)
Darren Oldham – Managing Director
Söderhamn Eriksson (UK)
Professor Piotr Paschalis-Jakubowicz –
Warsaw Agricultural University (Poland)
Mr Kim Carstensen
Director General
Forest Stewardship Council
Eduardo Morales
South American Forestry Consultant
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4 International Forest Industries | APRIL / MAY 2017
EDITOR’S COMMENT
Industry events crucial
to innovation
Industry events crucial to innovation
I love conference season, which is right about
now for the Northern Hemisphere.
Apart from signalling that the long, dark
days of winter are well and truly behind us,
it also kick-starts a period during which we
periodically take a break from harvesting and
processing trees to meet with others in the
industry, kick the proverbial (or literal) tyres
of a few machines and have a few drinks with
old friends.
I personally enjoy this period because it
allows me to get out from behind the desk
and, at times, handle the controls of some of
the most powerful and sophisticated pieces
of technology in world – it makes a nice
change from writing about them and looking
at the pictures.
But there are, clearly, far more important
reasons to hold these events than to give
journalists a chance to play ‘make believe’
with expensive pieces of kit and for industry
professionals to socialise.
Industry events give forestry professionals
a chance to compare, contrast and move
innovation forward through collaboration.
They provide concentrated periods of
discussion when not only technology is
broached but topics such as sustainability,
best practice and safety.
The first two events on the International
Forest Industries radar are Ligna and Elmia
in Germany and Sweden, respectively. Both
these events provide a comprehensive
program of technical presentations, machine
demonstrations, as well as a high-level
sessions for foresters and sawyers to learn
more about what’s driving their industries
right now and what might be driving those
same industries in the future.
For Ligna, that will this year centre on a theme
of ‘Access to Resources and Technology’,
within its World Industry Summit initiative,
which started in 2015. Every day, the forum
will highlight a topic of current international
interest in the industry, with experts from
Germany, Austria, Canada, Russia, Sweden
and Spain giving presentations and fielding
questions from the audience.
The main themes at the Wood Industry
Summit 2017 are: Forestry 4.0 – Vision or
Future?; Development and Infrastructure to
Ensure Sustainable Forestry; Forest Fires –
Prevention, Detection and Firefighting; and
Fleet Management to Optimize the Logistics
Chain from the Forest to the Factory.
At Elmia, the show and coverage promises to
be bigger than ever with three new sections
being added. They are: Load & Transport; the
Drone Zone; and Hunting.
We would hope many of the ideas that come
up appear misguided and, at the extreme,
slightly crazy. These are the ideas that today
seem far-fetched but may turn out to be the
cornerstones of a better, more efficient, more
productive industry in the future. That final section is unlikely to interest a
great number of our readers but one must be
wondering why haulage hasn’t been covered
previously and all will be hugely excited by
the wide-ranging applications possible with
the introductions of drones to the industry,
particularly for woodland managers.
At one point, biomass wasn’t collected, all
scanning and sorting was done by humans,
and sitting in the cab of a harvester was cold
and uncomfortable. We’ll of course be at both shows with pens
and cameras at the ready so please look out
for us if you want to enjoy one of those high-
level discussions (or maybe just a cold beer!).
Can you imagine the look on the faces within
the sawmilling space when the idea of using
machines to watch, analyse and optimise
mill throughput and cutting patters was
first floated some decades ago? At best, the
cost would have been seen as horrendously
prohibitive. Today, sawmills failing to invest in
the latest technology risk losing money on a
daily basis to inefficiency. Enjoy,
Chris Cann
Editor