Systemic wood resource monitoring

Background and Objective

In the year 1999 the project “location of the timber industry” was started. It is actually continued in a broader framework with the title “wood resource monitoring”. It aims at identifying production capacities and raw material demand of the wood processing industry in Germany (saw mills, panel mills, pulp mills). Furthermore all other areas of the sources and the uses of the raw material of wood (recovered wood, urban wood, short rotation coppice (SRC), biomass power and heating plants, BTL, chemical raw material, private households) are monitored regularly. The conducted surveys also allow the description of regional wood flows for most market segments. All resource flows are included in a wood raw material balanc, which meanwhile is calculated back to the year 1987.

From 2021 onwards, the Thünen Institute will take over the leadership of the project, so that a new permanent task will arise in the future. To this end, we will build on the many years of preparatory work carried out at the University of Hamburg under Prof. Udo Mantau, the INFRO company and the Thünen Institute. Within the framework of this project, we are therefore analysing options for the continuation of the wood ressources monitoring. Another aspect is the linking of the results of the raw material monitoring wood with statistical reporting systems.

Target Group

Approach

As a basis separate analyses of the sectors of supply and use of the resource wood are conducted. Our methodology is as follows: We survey consumers regarding their use of the wood raw materials. The different mass flows are brought together in the wood resource balance. A specific focus is laid on sectors which are not covered by official statistics (e. g. wood energy market, private households). But also in markets which are covered by statistics additional information is necessary, e. g. on the mix of wood raw material assortments or if only parts of the whole sector are covered (e. g. sawmills are only covered by official statistics when having at least ten employees). For the continuation of the wood resource monitoring various concepts will be developed and evaluated.

Results

For the conception of the continuation of the wood resource monitoring, information from the previously conducted surveys was analysed (ex-post analysis). On this basis, different variants were developed for each sector under investigation as to how the data collection can be carried out in the future. Essential criteria for the sector-specific survey concepts are, for example, the expected costs, the expected time expenditure of the Thünen Institute staff, the feasibility in terms of awarding contracts as well as the required time expenditure of the awarding procedure, the sector-specific characteristics (such as size structures and willingness to participate in surveys) as well as the size of the population (choice between sample and full survey).

The use-side calculations on logging in Germany (Thünen logging back-calculation) were successfully optimised and updated in the spring of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively, using new results from the ongoing project.

• Supply of wood processing residues – a basic calculation approach and its application on the example of wood packaging.
  Project brief 2022/17a
  DOI:10.3220/PB1650527751000