Forest Industry Future
Forest industry future competence cluster accelerates growth
Forest Industry is undergoing a significant structural breakdown. The maturation of traditional market and the economical crisis of global operating environment are challenges that need to be looked into. New, innovative products and services are researched in order to find solutions, and traditional products and services are continuously developed. This breakdown is a challenge, but it also unveils new possibilities to grow and develop.
Forest Industry Future competence cluster’s goal is to be a part in creating and developing possibilities bringing business and growth especially to sm-enterprises.
Forest Industry Future competence cluster’s objective is to find new solutions for forest industry and to accelerate the growth of especially sm-enterprises and to speed up the regeneration of the field. To reach these goals, we develop new technologies, operations models, products and services. The foundation of the development is verstatile innovation work, that combines research with technology- and business competence. Emphasis of competence clusters operation is in national and international networking.
The Centres of Expertise that are part of Forest Industry Future Competence are Jyväskylä region centre of expertise, Southeast Finland Centre of Expertise, Kokkola Region Centre of Expertise, Mikkeli Region Centre of Expertise, Measurepolis-Kajaani Cluster of meausrement technology enterprises, North Karelia Centre of Expertise and Southeast Finland Centre of Expertise.
Strategic competence areas
Tailored fibre supply competence area’s objectives are produce focused information for different forest industry fields regarding the amount, quality, optimisation, and logistics of wood raw material. Currently interesting topics are for example the availability and possibilities of energy wood. The challenge is to interpret the versatile and diverse measurement data, and to turn it into metrics required by the practical forest industry.
Wood chemistry and novel products competence area’s goal is to diversify the use of wood raw-material, to make way for ”green” chemistry and the utilization of energy originating from forest biomass. The chemicals in wood can be applied to many different fields: functional foods, pharmaceutical industry, substitutions for oil-based products used to manufacture glues, paints and rasin and also to natural wood protective liquids and
Composites and Intelligent wood competence area solves problems related to availability of wood and environmental effects of chemicals by developing new methods to modify wood and wood-composite materials to substitute traditional wood. Natural fibre composites expand the use of wood and can bring new features and qualities to products. Compentence area aims also at adding new features and intelligence to wood constructions by applying for example sensor technology.
Packaging competence area develops materials by for example searching for new coatings. Processibility and technical challenges of processing paperboard packages are also objects of development. Intelligent features and different indicators bring additional value to packages. The objective is to combine customer-driven design and the possibilities of new technologies.
Printed Intelligence competence are aims at developing printed intelligence as well as applications for printing intelligence to paper and packages. Printed intelligence can be applied to several fields. Packaging industry is believed to be the first large area to be developed by printed intelligence. The work on the printed intelligence field of competence requires interdisciplinary development and the technology integration of several operators. The aim is to produce inexpensive mass products that can be printed on rolled sheets.
Measuring technology competence area develops new technologies required for the future products of forest industry. Competence area offers enterprises versatile testing facilities to both chemical and mechanical measuring. Objective is to extend this to a comprehensive network of testing facilities, that can be utilized to different needs of measuring technology.
Enabling technologies competence area is company-oriented and works very widely with different technologies and disciplines. The aim is to develop the future businesses, technologies, information and production systems, and life cycle services required by the production of fibre-based products (pulp, mechanical pulp, deinked pulp, paper, paperboard, and new fibre products).
Contact details
Antti Juva
Programme Director
tel. +35850 511 1716
antti.juva(at)lprinno.fi
www.fifcluster.fi
Lappeenranta Innovation Ltd
Laserkatu 6
FI-53850 Lappeenranta
FINLAND
Tel. +358 (0)40 740 3386
www.lprinno.fi
