Now the forest is yellow again
Thirty years ago the Swedish forest was yellow. Then Volvo stopped making forest machines. Now they’re back in the forest in full force.
“Our goal is to be a total supplier to the forest industry,” declared Anders Barreng of Volvo Construction Equipment at the Elmia Wood international forestry fair.
At the global level Volvo has continued to supply forest machinery but this basically involved rebuilding contractor machinery to handle whole stems. Volvo was involved in developing the Nordic cut-to-length (CTL) method but then left that sector of the market.
“Two-thirds of the world’s felling operations still involve whole stems,” explains Jukka Moisander, who is in charge of Volvo CE’s international forestry division. “This method is still more efficient in previously unharvested forests but the CTL method is slowly winning market share as the proportion of planned and harvested forests increases.”
Volvo the biggest owner
Volvo has now made a strategic change of direction and is focusing on becoming a total supplier to customers in selected market segments. One of those is forestry, where Volvo aims to provide everything a customer needs, from machinery to financing and training, either with its own products or with the help of business partners.
Volvo CE has bought into one of the forest industry’s most interesting development projects, the El-Forest forwarder, which has been developed by a small company in northern Sweden. The first prototype of the machine was shown at Elmia Wood 2005 and caused a sensation. It attracted the most press coverage of the fair by a wide margin.
“Volvo has gone in as the biggest of the three part-owners of the company,” explains El-Forest’s CEO, Gunnar Bäck. “Volvo’s resources and stable reputation on the market have been decisive for the project.”
First in production
Another participant in the project is Sveaskog, Sweden’s biggest and Europe’s fourth-largest forest owner. In the beginning of June, concurrent with Elmia Wood, the first production unit began operating in the Swedish province of Hälsingland. Unit number two is being demonstrated at Elmia Wood.
The El-Forest represents a completely new and innovative approach, not only for a forest machine but also for the entire contracting sector. Volvo says the machine is cutting-edge technology that is more advanced than what Volvo itself has developed.
“We have hybrid-powered wheel loaders but the electric motors are just a complement to the combustion engine,” Jukka says. “The El-Forest is fundamentally electric powered with the combustion engine as a complement.”
Volvo defies the economic crisis
The El-Forest is a six-wheeled forwarder for large-scale operations. It makes full use of electric power. In addition to its lower fuel consumption, 20 to 50 percent less than for conventional forwarders, the El-Forest has major functional advantages. A powerful electric motor sits in each wheel hub. This arrangement means there is no need for driving shafts, differentials, and so on. The entire machine weighs less and moves more easily. The individual propulsion and three-axled steering also mean that the machine has a very tight turning radius and exerts less ground pressure.
“An ordinary forwarder weighs thirty percent more than its load capacity,” Jukka explains. “On the El-Forest the ratio is one to one.”
As a machine, the El-Forest has been known about for a long time. What’s new now is Volvo’s vigorous focus on new technology in the midst of a deep recession, and the company’s return to the Nordic forest industry with CTL machines.