Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

This survey aims to investigate the timber catch area of a private owned sawmill held by VIDA. In order to provide their sawmills with timber, Vida has a commodity company called VIDA Skog AB. This company is responsible for purchases of timber from individual forest owners. The timber and its additional costs is an expensive part of the production and effectivity is important to reduce the costs. This can be done by lowering the costs of transporting the timber which is accomplished with purchases closer to the industries.
This study investigates how much of the approachable timber in a defined area that is purchased by Vida Skog and how much other adversaries purchase. It also determines the structure of the forests in the defined area concerning standing volume, annual felling, area of productive forest land, annual increment etc.
The defined area, 784 232 hectares of productive forest land, contains a large standing volume where Norway spruce is the most common specie. Also Scots pine and Birch is commonly occurring. A considerable part of the annual increment is not harvested and large parts of the productive forest land, at least 28 677 hectares, is excluded in order to increase biodiversity.
The total amount of harvested volume in final fellings in 2014 was 1 559 880 m3fub and 1 013 922 m3fub was calculated to be appropriate timber for sawmills. The results showed that Vida Skog purchased 21.9 percent of the available timber on the market in the defined area. It also alleges that in order to provide the sawmill with timber only from the defined area with maintained market share, the annual increment isn’t enough. A combination of increased felling in the area and an increased market share is required.