The company was successful in a joint application with 28 partners from Germany, Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Spain for a collaborative project SIMWOOD. The SIMWOOD project aimed to increase the mobilisation of wood from forests and woodlands in Europe. The project reached out to stakeholders and regional initiatives with the aim of ‘waking up’ and mobilising forest owners, promoting collaborative forest management and ensuring sustainable forest functions. The 28 partners collected data on socio-economic, technical and ecological barriers and solutions for wood mobilisation in the 14 model regions of the project. The project outputs in Ireland included:
- Regional profile for South East Ireland
- Regional Learning Labs (stakeholder consultation)
- Focus study (survey 80 forest owners in the south east)
- Two pilot projects
- Promoting environmental friendly logging operations
- Preferred corporate structures for producer groups
- Methods of mobilisation
- Project conference hosted in Kilkenny Castle with field trips to forest owners
- The new Handbook for wood mobilisation is available on the SIMWOOD project page: http://simwood.efi.int/
- The new SIMWOOD Information System can be found on: https://simwood.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
Irish Wood Producers 