Wood harvesting and logistics in Russia - focus on research and business opportunities

Abstract

The Russian Federation is one of the main trading partners of Finland and the Russian forest sector is an important operational environment for many Finnish forest sector companies. The Russian forest sectoris a quickly changing environment that creates both challenges and opportunities for business. The project had an aim to improve and secure business opportunities and the competitiveness of Finnishforest-related companies and research in the emerging Russian market through international research.New research methods and approaches were built and applied within the project to support successful business operations in the specific Russian conditions. Opportunities for further improvements were found at many stages of wood harvesting and logistical operations in Northwest Russia. Extensive field and theoretical studies and close cooperation with the logging companies resulted in a set of tools, models and recommendations which could help to realise the discovered opportunities. Field studies showed that the productivity of wood harvesting in some of the companies in Northwest Russia could be increased on average from 10.7 m3/PMH to 18.0 m3/PMH. Improvements of the quality of stem processing by harvesters were reached using the project s recommendations on maintenance of delimbing knives. The share of deficient logs (due to unprocessed branches) in the total number of processed stems decreased by 4-6%. A decision support system for optimisation of wood harvesting plans and logistics of logs and energy wood developed and tested in practice demonstrated short and long term positive economic effects. The total run of trucks was decreased by 22% and the fleet utilisation rate was increased by 19% up to 0.89. The positive effect from logistic optimisation can be boosted by proper forest road planning and construction. Investment in construction of forest roads can be economically feasible in the Russian conditions. The projectrevealed differences in ergonomics and impacts on the environment between different forest machines and harvesting systems applied in Northwest Russia that will help the logging companies to selectbetter machines and methods in the future. The results of the project are publicly available and widely disseminated. Utilisation of the achieved results in practice would improve productivity of harvesting operations, human and environmental safety. The project s results would facilitate harvesting and use of energy wood in Russia which could result in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.