The role of woodyards is reaching a critical juncture. For a papermill, raw material is the biggest cost, and this is beginning to increase. Power plants have discovered co-firing as an effective way to offset their use of coal, with some switching to biomass entirely. Meanwhile, there is increasing demand for biomass-derived fuels throughout the transport sector; all competing for feedstocks of sustainably sourced processed wood and wood waste.

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An ambitious eighteen-month-long rebuilding and modernization project at Bruks Siwertell Group company, Bruks AB, based in Arbrå, Sweden, is set to reap both social and environmental benefits. The buildings are not only more energy efficient; they also provide an inviting, healthy and happy workplace environment.

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Bruks Siwertell Group’s USA-based Atlanta business unit, has partnered with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to help maintain one of the region’s most important conservation areas, Sprewell Bluff Park. The first event saw Group volunteers remove around 400kg of litter and debris from the verges of the park’s access roads, restoring its beauty and protecting the environment.

Few technologies have done as much as Siwertell ship unloaders to transform the dry bulk handling landscape. This is not just in terms of environmental capabilities, such as eliminating spillage and minimizing dust emissions, but extends to setting market-leading through-ship efficiencies, which have revolutionized jetty utilization rates, vessel turnarounds and the profitability of port terminals.

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Bruks Siwertell Group has rolled-out a comprehensive diversity and inclusion workshop for its leadership teams. It is designed to challenge existing perspectives and provide practical tools to address biases, discrimination and foster workplace inclusivity. The training has been implemented at a Group-wide level, ensuring that all managers can support positive change within their local teams.

Bruks Siwertell has recently undertaken a series of customer-focused visits to several port facilities in the Philippines, strengthening the company’s customer support commitment, and further cultivating its local installation and service capabilities. In collaboration with a new local service partner, Portmizer, Bruks Siwertell’s Örjan Westerberg and Graham Christie visited several port terminal installations, which have had Siwertell screw-type ship unloaders serving them since as early as 1997, and as recently as 2022.

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By instigating a number of relatively small changes and actions, Bruks Siwertell’s Bjuv-based business unit in Sweden is set to achieve an annual saving of 36 MWh in electricity and 60 MWh in heating; equivalent to around 67.1 metric tons of carbon emissions.

The road-mobile units offer the company a unique combination of asset agility and market-leading through-ship efficiency, and are capable of deploying within an hour of arriving at the quayside. They move between the ports of Suwaiq, Sultan Qaboos, and Sur in Oman, directly discharging cement to bulk trucks

Even if humanity woke up tomorrow to find every kilowatt of fossil fuel energy replaced with wind, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear, there would still be work to do. Reversing the effects of climate change will be a matter of reducing the CO2 already in the atmosphere, as well as preventing more. Any realistic decarbonization scenario will necessarily include both.

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As part of its climate action strategy, Bruks Siwertell Group company, FTG Baltic, has completed a tree planting project in Pakeriai, a village in the Lithuanian district of Zarasai. It is estimated that the trees will absorb approximately 137.5 metric tons of CO2 annually, contributing to the Group’s environmental sustainability targets and engagement with climate change mitigation initiatives.