Welcome to the latest issue of WoodTECH.News.
As 2022 comes to a close, it’s been a year where Covid-19 and disrupted supply chains have been replaced by a return to ‘normal’ operations, but with high global inflation and shifting timber demand. Here are the top 5 read stories from WoodTECH News this year:
- Two TMT plants for the southern hemisphere
- Southern pine mill fly-through
- HewSaw Delivers Efficiency and Productivity in a New Sawline
- State-of-the-art sawmill starts in Finland
- Heat & resin treatment planned for NZ Radiata pine
As you can see above, the most popular stories have focused on new or upgraded sawmill operations. In some cases, the wood processing industry is adopting new technologies being rolled out in other manufacturing industries. A major report we cover this month highlights that over 500,000 new robots were installed in manufacturing operations throughout the world. This is a 30% increase from the year before and the largest growth came from our Asia/Australia region.
Another technology, RFID, has been around for 20 years but it’s quickly becoming a critical piece of kit in supply chain automation. Dutch-based timber frame producer, Van de Vin, is inserting specially designed RFID dowel tags into the ends of each piece of timber to digitally track the status and location of every window frame during production. As well as time and cost savings, the tags could potentially provide a complete life history, all the way to disposal.
For those companies interested in biofuels, wood fired boilers and opportunities for better utilising wood residues, we’re in the process of designing next year’s Residues2Revenues 2023 event programme. This year, the event was sold out. An ‘Expressions of Interest’ to present at the 2023 event has just been released. Further details can be found in this post.
This will be the last WoodTECH News issue for 2022 and we will be back in February 2023. Enjoy your Christmas break – if one is being taken – and thank you for your support and input over this last year.
Check out these stories and much more below. Enjoy this month’s issue.
Stories this issue:
- Record shipments of Russian timber – via China
- Expressions of Interest: Residues2Revenues 2023
- Industrial robot installations hit record high
- Australian timber research centre continues vital work
- Europe’s energy crisis: the wood squeeze
- November 2022 NZ log market update
- RFID tracks workprogress for frame producer
- What it took to get us to stay
- 40% denser than engineered wood – SEB
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