Impressive project diversity at the 2nd WOOD INNOVATION DAY

Startups and experts from the forestry and timber industry met for the forum

The 2nd WOOD INNOVATION DAY at SWISS KRONO brought together an international audience from the wood and forestry industry at our Design Station in Wittstock/Dosse in June 2023. Startups presented their projects and ventures. Experts complemented the presentations with scientific know-how and current research topics. "With these events, which we organise together with Potsdam entrepreneur Ulf Leonhard, we pursue different goals," explains SWISS KRONO Managing Director Hendrik Hecht. "As a company, we observe the market and the developments in our industry. That is why we are interested in the projects of the startup scene as well as in the specialist topics. Furthermore, as a global player, we can support the startups with our experience, our network and possibly also in finding investors."

Startups pitch for investors
At the opening of the specialist event, Dr Ulrike Hagemann, Head of the State Competence Centre Forestry Eberswalde of the State Forestry Enterprise Brandenburg, provided an important impetus with her message on the willingness for open thinking and experimentation in the face of global challenges. The WOOD INNOVATION DAY impressed - as did the premiere event in January 2023 - with an enormous variety of sustainable and very innovative ideas: from the platform for timber trade, international data collection on biodiversity as a basis for the orientation of companies, global reforestation projects to the use of a wide variety of biological materials as an alternative to plastic or for the production of composite panels to name just a few of the many topics. "These product developments are of course particularly exciting for us as a manufacturer of MDF and HDF boards," Hendrik Hecht emphasises.

Close cooperation with experts
We have been developing our site in Heiligengrabe for 30 years. That is why it was very important for us to involve as many stakeholders from Brandenburg as possible at the second WOOD INNOVATION DAY. Professors Prof. Tobias Cremer and Prof. Ulrich Schwarz, for example, presented their research projects, which they are conducting at the University for Sustainable Development in Eberswalde. DRYAD from Eberswalde exemplified the successful development from a startup to an expanding company with its solar-powered smoke detector.

REVIEW: 1. WOOD INNOVATION DAY, 26 January 2023