Forest Products Industry

Since its beginning as a small forestry equipment manufacturing shop in 1989, Quadco has built its reputation on a single promise: to never compromise on quality or service. That means listening to customers and dealers on its products’ ability to withstand heavy applications on the job site and adjusting its designs accordingly. That’s how the newest addition to its line of forestry mulchers was born. Source: Timberbiz The brand new Quadco 32-inch Drum Mulcher (32QDM) pairs innovation with value to offer forestry professionals their new go-to, versatile solution for tree and brush clearing. As the latest addition to Quadco’s line of rugged forestry mulching attachments, the 32QDM is surprisingly compact, without compromising on toughness. Built to run on 8 to 15 ton excavators, 32QDM takes productivity and ground material processing to the next level. Rather than offering a lateral tilt as a costly add-on feature, the 32QDM comes with a next-level 100-degree lateral tilt as the standard. This attachment also features a spiralized drum to help distribute material evenly over the cutters and serve as a bite limiter. The 32QDM is compatible with a variety of Quadco teeth and includes a fixed heel with replaceable bucket teeth for added productivity. Like all Quadco attachments, 32QDM is built to stand the test of time and perform like new after years of heavy-duty applications. Manufactured especially for professional contractors, 32QDM features a built-in universal boom adapter to provide equipment dealers and rental fleets with the flexibility they require to meet the needs of their clients. Changing carriers is as simple as replacing the pins and sleeves, saving you valuable time and money.

There’s something highly unusual about the new Olympic Aquatics Centre on the outskirts of Paris. It’s not just the building’s striking form, with its massive, Pringle-shaped solar roof. It’s not solely that the 5,000-seat venue, constructed mainly from wood, was pieced together like a Lego set. Source: Bloomberg It’s also the fact that the centre, designed by architecture firms Ateliers 2/3/4/ and VenhoevenCS, will be the main architectural icon for a Summer Games that is actively trying not to build them. Every host city of the Summer Olympics tries to use them to power some major transformative project. It might be a huge expansion of a metro system (as in Athens in 2004), the redevelopment of a large tract of derelict land (which London undertook in 2012) or the re-planning of an underused seafront (like the one Barcelona carried out in 1992). But Paris 2024 wants to make sustainability, rather than monumental construction, its chief legacy. Compared to the pharaonic projects of the past, the aspiration might seem almost perverse. There are still some new projects: The Olympic Village, north of Paris, will be an eco-quarter where all buildings under eight floors will be made from wood and glass, and all energy will be sustainably sourced via heat pumps and renewables. An 8,000-capacity arena at Porte de la Chapelle, comprised of a recycled aluminum façade around a wooden structure, is destined to live on as the home for Paris’ basketball team, as well as two public gyms. But overall, 95% of the Olympics venues will be facilities that either already existed or that will be dismantled for reuse after the Games. This make-do-and-mend approach could, organizers hope, help provide a springboard for a green transformation of France’s construction industry. France hopes to cut carbon in the building sector as the European Union strives to reduce the bloc’s overall emissions by 55% by 2030. That will primarily mean retrofitting existing structures but using more wood in new construction — including the advanced wood components known as mass timber is expected to play a significant role as well. (A French government proposal in 2020 to require all new public buildings to use 50% wood or other biomaterials was, however, ultimately dropped.) Industry experts are optimistic about France’s willingness to manage this swing, even if it lags behind some neighbours in areas such as renewable energy. “While our wood construction industry is not as developed as, say, Austria or Germany,” says Luc Floissac, an environmental adviser and researcher at Toulouse University, “our use of bio-based materials such as straw for buildings is already ahead of all the other European countries combined.” Investment has also backed up official enthusiasm, Floissac says. The government has so far issued around €200 million ($218 million) in subsidies to projects using wood and other biomaterials. This push has already powered some growth. The wood construction market reached €4.6 billion last year, an increase of 14% since 2020, according to a July report from timber and forestry industry group France Bois Forêt. The proportion of new buildings constructed in wood has still not risen dramatically, however. They comprised 18.3% of new non-residential buildings in 2022, up only slightly over 16.8% in 2020. Wood-built residential structures remained at around 6% over the same period. The sector is nonetheless targeting a total construction-market share of 20% to 30% by 2030, wresting some of that away from the currently dominant material, concrete. And it’s ramping up its industrial capacities in order to meet that goal. “Industrial equipment in France is undersized,” says Dominique Cottineau, director of the Wood Construction Industry Union (UICB). “But the trajectory is changing, and we’re going to be building with a lot more wood than before.” The new Aquatics Center wasn’t primarily built near Paris but hundreds of miles away, in a bucolic, half-timbered village near the German border. The structure was prefabricated at a distance by wood construction company Mathis, which has been sawing and whittling timber for buildings on the same site in Alsace since 1809. Each piece of the final building was planned, cut, glued, and bent into shape in Mathis’ yard before being shipped to Paris for assembly on site. The potential advantages of building in wood are legion. For many architects, its beauty without extra finishing provides both practical and aesthetic benefits. “We wanted to use the least amount of material possible, and wood means we don’t have to use drywall or other fixes used in construction to hide structural elements,” says Laure Mériaud, partner at Ateliers 2/3/4/. That can in turn give wooden buildings an extra sensual charm, according to Cécilia Gross, partner at VenhoevenCS. “We don’t have to paint it,” she says. “It has warmth, it has colour and it has a scent. You can smell it when you’re in the pool.” Harvested wood is generally considered carbon neutral if all trees felled are replaced with new saplings that are allowed to grow to the same age. Despite being able to withstand considerable pressure and wear, wood is relatively light, further reducing emissions by lessening the load on construction machinery. Mass timber isn’t even particularly flammable when used carefully. It is actually harder to ignite and conducts heat less rapidly than a steel frame, testing has showed. Visiting Mathis in Alsace, other clear advantages to wood construction become evident. The structures the company builds can be vast and complex in design, with computers programmed to dictate the shape and volume of components to be cut, and with precise scheduling of work so that the right pieces are ready for shipment in the correct order for construction. But from there, things get easier. The hangars of Mathis’ woodyard are committed to relatively straightforward processes, with spaces for drying wood, cutting planks into pieces and gluing them together. The only grand-scale machinery is a press that bends huge pieces of laminated wood — of up to 45 meters (148 feet) in length into arch shapes for roof supports. Even here the material is […]