The Residues2Revenues 2022 event run in late July 2022 saw an amazing turnout from across the forestry and wood residues industries. It was a decade since the last wood residues programme had been run by the Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA). Over 350 delegates, both in person and remotely were involved. It was testament to the growing recognition by forest owners, wood processors and those involved in log harvesting and wood transport, that demand for alternatives to fossil fuels is right now, transforming the forestry sector.

The 2022 conference, pre and post-conference workshops and exhibitions (inside and outside the venue) showcased new innovations and smart operating practices being used, locally and internationally, to harvest sort, dry, transport and sell forest residues, bin wood, offcuts left on landings, short length or malformed logs that weren’t meeting MDF, pulp-mill or chip export log specifications and sawmill residues.

Details on the expectations and requirements from a growing number of larger industrial scale heat and energy users who’d either made the switch to biofuels were outlined to those attending along with early discussions on a raft of options that could be set up to aggregate regional fuel supplies to ensure consistency of quality of the product and supply.

Discussions at the 2022 event also looked at how prevailing supply models to progressively drive scale and supply chain reliability could be changed. It was felt that growers, processors and in some cases consumers, all needed to be part of any future supply contract models.

The clear message from R2R 2022 was that demand for wood residues or biofuels is increasing exponentially, that much greater volumes of woody biomass were needed, that the economics for supply are really starting to stack up and that the forestry industry was committed to ensure that woody biomass would be available to meet current and the projected future demand.