Last year, Lead forester Brendan Foster was a winner of the inaugural Timber Queensland Growth Scholarships to further his forest management career and make a contribution to the industry. Brendan elected to undertake a study tour in Finland and Sweden to bring back some great ideas to HQP and our industry colleagues. 

Now a Resource Analyst with HQP, Brenda jetted off to Finland in early May and is documenting his three week journey to see what some of the world leaders are up to now and where they're headed. Brendan is visiting seedling nurseries, forest growers, timber mills, research organisations, award winning timber architects, machinery manufacturers and a forestry conference.

Here are his reports so far:

Architecture in Helsinki

On arrival, I was fortunate enough to meet Anssi Lassila, founder of the Architecture firm OOPEAA. Anssi is award winning for his work with buildings that enhance people’s interactions with nature, rather than detract from them.

Anssi was generous enough to show me around a new multi-purpose building which is currently under construction at Jårvenpåå Technical School. It is a 3,000m² building housing a basketball court, various offices and teaching spaces.

The construction of this building is with glu-lam beams for framing and uses CLT panels for walls. The CLT panels are about 25cm thick, and so negate the need for any other wall insulation. There is a slightly different wall structure where an area needs more acoustic isolation. It was a quiet worksite, not too dusty, with the timber being easy to work with. It was also on schedule for a 12 month completion time.

The next day I went walking around Helsinki, and came across the Helsinki Pools, another new building made all of timber. Right next door, a new modular timber construction was going up. This will be the new Store Enso HQ. You can see it uses a hybrid frame of steel and mass timber. The best one for me though, was Anssi’s award winning Lonna Sauna. It is a modern take on the log cabin sauna, and was magical. I didn’t get a picture for you from the sauna - I didn’t want to be the creep running around with a camera!

One key thing to do is look at the use of timber on the exterior. These architects create different textures in the case of the sea pool, and the control the heat and light from the sun through windows in the case of the multi-purpose gymnasium.

Metsähallitus
I was very lucky to meet some foresters from the Finnish state forest organisation, Metsähallitus. It was fascinating to see how they are balancing their activities to meet a range of different objectives with their multi use forests. The aim is to get the most benefit from every hectare - not only timber but also mushrooms, berries, game and a myriad of other recreational activities.

In Lieksa, where I was we were very close to the border with Russia. Not only were there pre-historic artifacts and sites like ancient graves, there were more modern historical relics from WWII to manage, and security with the present situation. And they still harvest six million cubic metres a year!

Risutec
I spent 15 minutes helping to test an SKB planting head prior to delivery to Indonesia for Risutec. No one offered me a job as a machine operator though... It was great to catch up with the team who design and build a range of forestry machines. They have the motto of ‘building the forest’ and almost every machine they produce carries out at least two jobs.

The planting head pictured does site preparation, planting, watering and fertilising all in one pass.

This is an exciting space to be a part of, with development happening rapidly to meet the needs of different forest owners all around the world. For instance this machine looks very different to the one delivered not long ago to southern Africa, which is different again to what was developed for a specific customer in the USA.

Raute
‘Making wood Matter’ is the motto for Raute of Finland. This motto perfectly encapsulates what many people in forests and timber are aiming to achieve. Juha, Juho and Hannu of Raute were generous enough to spend some time with me chatting about all things engineered wood.

We discussed the exciting automation capability they are building in this space, the critical handling, grading and analytical abilities that are possible in a modern plant now, and most importantly, where this all might fit in for Queensland.

There are trade offs and challenges with every product, but demand for engineered wood is growing worldwide and there are genuine opportunities.