A number of factors are currently influencing the wood sourcing dynamics for birch. The current downturn in the industry has led to a demand decrease. Despite a general decline, demand for non-Russian birch remains solid. Additionally, the stable harvest of Finnish birch pulpwood and logs is experiencing significant price increases, prompting potential market adjustments and temporary increases in harvest volumes to meet demand.
The EU and member states provide funding to encourage low-carbon initiatives through a variety of projects and programmes. However, to secure financial needs of the Green Transition, public and private funding must cooperate.
Maintaining and developing a competitive operating environment plays a key role in the development of a high value-added bioproduct industry in Finland.
Future pulp mills enable improved circularity and may act as a platform for external companies working in a bioecosystem. A mill willl have more departments/plants that use all streams, as well as possible external operators, all on the same mill site. There is no single solution for the mill, but rather a range of options in both the core mill and operating within the ecosystem.
In the last few years, the green transition, or the change from growth based on fossil fuels to growth based on green solutions, has ramped up considerably.
Forest residues are one of the most promising renewable feedstocks due to their availability, cost, and independence from the food industry. They can be converted into a variety of products, including biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials, which can replace the use of fossil fuels in the production of steel, chemicals, and transportation fuels
The EU economy is still largely dependent on fossil fuel. Going forward, the new alternative energy technologies should support the EU FIt for 55 package and strive to secure the energy supply.
For forest industry companies, packaging of different wood, paper, board, tissue and pulp products have been flying outside the sustainability radar. Fossil-based materials, especially plastics, are widely used in the forest products supply chain, thus a lot of room for improvement exists sustainability-wise.
Common reasons for not reaching the full potential of tall oil are outdated technology, not enough demand for CTO, and remote locations making it unfeasible to extract and ship elsewhere. Outdated technology can be solved through investments into modern extraction technologies, which are far better compared to the ones developed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Global forests are a rich source of antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal bioactive compounds with underutilized commercial opportunities. Many of the potential candidate compounds or groups of compounds have already been identified and studied to some extent on R&D level, but there is still a vast amount of untapped business potential in finding new more potent compounds, and developing new innovations based on already accumulated knowledge. The forest industry can offer solutions by producing antiviral and antimicrobial bioactive compounds that can be used as part of the treatment against the viral infection.
The development of a recycling infrastructure for packaging waste is a longer-term goal, which will be needed in order to more efficiently utilize raw materials and support circularity and by that a more sustainable future for our globe. What is surprising, is the currently lacking sorting of used food packaging in fast food restaurants, as typically all trash is placed into the same bin.