Socio-Economic Effects

Consolidating the uptake of recycled wood waste

Recycling waste wood is an ongoing priority in Europe.

The main output markets are biomass, animal/outdoor bedding, engineered wood products (MDF/OSB).

Creating a new eco-innovative product such as the LIFE+ GREENJOIST will consolidate and widen this green market.

The main short term market for the GREENJOIST system consists of timber skid consumers.

Timber skids (also known as wood skids, pipe skids, mats depending on the field) are employed in many industrial sectors from manufacturing to construction, logistics to transportation. Skids are used for heavy-duty logistics and storage, for example in the crating of heavy machinery and heavy tonnage.

Preliminary analyses conducted by IMAL, CEP and EUMA have calculated that a medium-sized manufacturing enterprise buys at least 30 mc timber skids per year. This is due to the fact that skids are easily consumed daily: often worn, overloaded and damaged, but also ‘lost’ (e.g. loaded and never returned). Skids are made of virgin wood; they are mostly employed in a loose manner (e.g. laid down in storage areas), especially when the load is to be moved frequently. LIFE+ GREENJOIST joists have properties which are comparable to virgin wood

Additionally, with respect to virgin wood, they are less prone to getting damp, chipping and are ready for ISPM 15 and thus international transportation. In terms of market volume, again a cautious estimate, we can consider solely the manufacturing industry in Europe (thus not the logistics, building etc. – one of the greatest consumers of skids) totalling 2.1 million enterprises in 2010.

If we then consider the medium and large enterprises, there are about 85 k (or 4.5% of the total) in Europe; if only 50-60% of these industries were to consume skids (very conservative) at the estimated 30 mc per year, this would mean about 1.2-1.5 million tons of virgin wood consumed by this sector alone, to be potentially substituted by the new technology and accounting for about 8-10% of the currently unused wood waste.

It should be added that the final price of GREENJOIST, compared to timber ones, will be at least 35% less (conservative, final price estimation), making it very competitive, especially in a sector (manufacturing) where quality wood is not the main focus, rather an inevitable yet unavoidable cost.

Green production

Going beyond economic and practical incentives, many companies are now extremely environment-aware (often due to rising customer pressure, e.g. the LOHAS customer profile), and using a product such as GREENJOIST will enable them to “green” their production process.

An important additional market for GREENJOIST is that of pallet and joist producers:

Wood pallets and wood packaging make up nearly 6% of the total packaging consumption in the world. Of this, 90-95% of all pallets produced across the globe are made from wood.

It is evident that wood based pallets are preferred by the market because of their structural characteristics that can be summarized in strength, stiffness, durability, usability, easiness to prototype and relative low cost.

GREENJOIST SCRW pallet block could cover approximately 50-60% of the production of pallet blocks (the rest already being covered by other technologies producing directly pressed pallet blocks, such as the ones designed by partners IMAL and EIR themselves).

From a preliminary market study by IMAL, it has been estimated that approximately 5,000 companies deal with pallet and joist production in Europe, and will be potentially very interested in acquiring the eco-innovative technology, to increase their competitiveness and enlarge their market, for at least the following reasons

• GREENJOIST technology is perfectly adaptable to existing processes. The introduction on the market will make it possible for these companies to utilise the same traditional cutting machinery with the new recycled joists, without having to completely renovate their production process, saving costs at the same time (final cost of GREENJOIST block is at least 35% cheaper than traditional ones).
• The price of virgin wood (decided in the commodity market at global level) is subject to high fluctuations at global level. The introduction of the GREENJOIST technology would decouple the production of pallets from the price of virgin wood, because it makes it possible to use wood waste, largely available, especially at local level.

GREENJOIST is also very interesting and has a high potential economic value for numerous other sub-sectors of the woodworking industry, which will be able to transform waste from their own process (wood dust and wood materials) into a very useful and valuable product.

Sawmill industry

Estimated at over 2,500 sawing companies currently operating in the EU.

Producers of non-recycled wood panels

Approx. 200-250 companies in the EU.

Producers of furniture

a large and extremely promising market, counting approx. 50.000 companies in the EU. We can estimate that 30% of this market would be potentially interested in the new technology, because they would use the new GREENJOIST for their own logistics, but also for manufacturing parts of furniture (table legs, kitchen frames, and so on).

Packaging and Logistics in general

This is a very large and vast sector. If we consider the area where pallets and wood joists are used for packaging & logistics we can estimate at least 20,000 potential end-users (conservative)

Construction companies

Joists can be used in several ways for non-structural functions in the green building sector.

If we consider the potential end-users of wood joists as a percentage of the total construction industry (e.g. very conservative 1%), we can have a rough figure of 24K – 25K potential additional users.