Grup Boix, owner of the largest sawmill in Catalonia, is about to lay the first stone of what will be the largest plant for the manufacture of structural wood panels (CLT) in Catalonia. With a planned investment of 35 million euros and the potential to create up to 40 jobs, this new plant located in Puig-reig (Berguedà ) will compete with the Sebastia company from Pallares, practically the only one that currently offers this type of wood for construction. Outside of Catalonia, there are also a few companies that are dedicated to the manufacture of wood for construction. The largest of these is the Galician company Xilonor, promoted by Finsa and Maderas Goiriz, but which will soon be ousted by the Basque company Egoin Wood Group, which is about to open the largest laminated wood (MLE) and cross-laminated (CLT) factory in Ãlava. ) from the country. With this new plant, which has required an investment of 25 million euros, Egoin Wood Group plans to increase its turnover by 50% in the next two years.
These investments respond to the growing demand for wood for construction, boosted by the development of solutions such as CLT, which allows wood to be used as a structural element in multi-storey buildings. “Currently there is more demand than supply, which makes it necessary to import 57% of the CLT in Spain,” says Carles MartÃ, general director of Grup Boix. According to a study commissioned by this company, growth in demand of between 10% and 12% per year is expected between 2023 and 2028.
“There are no official calculations, but the demand has calmly multiplied by two or three in the last five years, although it started from very low. Wood has gone from representing less than 1% of the volume of materials used in construction to around 3%â€, says Jordi Gené, a specialist in wood construction at the Center for Forest Science and Technology of Catalonia (Incafust – CTFC).
In Gené’s opinion, “the great challenge now is to be able to extract more wood from local forests so that the industry can work with raw material from here.” Salvador Ordóñez, owner of the World Wood Future consultancy and former coordinator of the Gremi de Fusta i Moble, agrees: “It makes little sense to import wood in a region as rich in forests as Catalonia, not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the long distance transportation. 63% of Catalonia is forested area and it is estimated that this grows by three million cubic meters every year, of which only one million is extracted. “The rest becomes a very dangerous fuel load in the event of a forest fire,” warns Ordóñez.
A few months ago, the sawmill sector suffered a supply crisis, caused, among other reasons, by the lack of professionals prepared for the extraction of wood from the forest due to the hardness of a job that is not yet mechanized (not so in the other European countries). “The employment situation continues to be very precarious because mechanization is still very low in Catalonia, but progress is being made despite the few facilities provided by the Generalitat,” denounces the general director of Grup Boix. Martà acknowledges that “we can die of success: everyone will want wood and there won’t be any.”
The use of wood in construction, and not only in uses of lower added value (pallets, chips or pellets), is also part of the solution because it allows higher economic margins that should make it possible to invest in machinery for greater extraction of wood. forest wood.
