The future of wood at the centre of Conlegno's Roadshow 2025

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - With the roadshow 2025, Conlegno continues its commitment to education and dissemination on issues related to the raw material wood and its use. For the meetings organised throughout Italy in 2025 the theme chosen is 'Will there be enough wood in the future? Knowing, valorising, certifying the raw material and the supply chain for sustainable forest management'. The first appointment of 2025 by Conlegno, a wood and cork services consortium that has been promoting biodiversity and forestry heritage for more than 20 years, is scheduled for 28 March in Carlentini (Syracuse), and will then continue with six other appointments from North to South. "The theme we are addressing in this 2025 is 'Will there be enough wood in the future? Knowing, valorising, certifying the raw material and the supply chain for sustainable forest management'. In this context we have two green mines in Italy: on the one hand the under-utilised Italian forest and on the other the supply chain of wood recovery, re-use and recycling,' explained the president, Massimiliano Bedogna. "Italian forests should be managed not only for the economic benefits they create, but also for the socio-environmental benefits. In fact, unmanaged forests fuel natural risks related to climate change such as the impact of parasites, hydrogeological disruption, and increase the fire load," he specified. With these meetings, Conlegno wants to raise the public's attention on the raw material, wood, which is fundamental in several sectors of the economy and in the last decade has gained more and more market space in the building industry, both private and public, precisely because of its sustainability.

The continuing interest in the material wood and its uses is testified by the 2024 data presented by the Timber Industry Federation in the Observatory dedicated to timber construction. A sector that shows an increase in volumes of +3.2% (compared to 2022) for a turnover of over 2.4 billion Euros.

Wood is able to store large quantities of Co2 subtracted from the atmosphere and is the sustainable structural material par excellence, being of natural origin that is easy to reuse, recycle and destined for circular supply chains. In this context, according to FAO data, worldwide wood consumption is set to rise from about 2.2 billion cubic metres today to 3.2 billion cubic metres in 2050. As far as the Italian situation is concerned, however, despite the fact that Italy's forest heritage amounts to almost 12 million hectares and covers about 40 per cent of the national territory, still above the EU average of 38.6 per cent, the utilisation rate of our forests is still very low and Italy is forced to import wood at higher prices. According to data from Masaf (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry), wood harvesting is estimated at 24% of the increase in volume (9 million cubic metres per year, 60% of which is firewood) against an average in continental Europe of 54% of the annual increase. For comparison, based on equivalent forest cover, wood production in Germany is more than 10 times that of Italy. Added to this is the fact that, in Italy, the total forest area has tripled in the last 30 years and has expanded by about 53,000 hectares per year at the expense of abandoned agricultural and pasture land in mountain and rural areas: in addition to being a waste of raw material, this unmanaged forest fuels natural risks related to climate change such as the impact of parasites, hydrogeological instability and increases the fire load. In our country there are also stricter protection constraints than in the rest of Europe, protection which, however, does not correspond to proper management: only 18% of forests are subject to forest planning and only 10% of these areas are subject to forest certification.

Forest certification is of particular importance for implementing sustainable forest management in our forests and for the use of domestically sourced wood by our companies, so we look with great interest at the increase in both certified areas and the number of companies with Chain of Custody (CoC) registered last year in Italy. The year 2024 marks an increase in forest areas certified according to the PeFC standard (1,061,059.26 hectares and +8.2% compared to 2023) and FSC (115,100 hectares and +35% compared to 2023) but also in Chains of Custody (CoC) with an increase of 16.8% for the PeFC standard bringing the total to 1,585, and 6.2% for the FSC standard bringing the total to 3,733 active certificates.

Instead, a paradigm shift is essential, and protection must be accompanied by management that also allows for an increase in production. In this context, Conlegno points out that there could be a shortage of wood for pallets and wood packaging due to 3 factors: alternative use of certain timber measures, such as sub-measures today for pallets and tomorrow for the production of XLAM for green building; European habitat protection regulations that will reduce the volume of cuts. This is already happening in Poland and Italy: Poland - cutting volumes have been reduced by 30 per cent in Trentino the annual recovery of Trentino forests is 400,000 cubic metres while the cutting capacity of Trentino sawmills is 1.4 million cubic metres and if the economy were in a more positive cycle?, there would be a shortage of raw material and employees.