Hardwood Technology Road Map in Lower Austria

Climate changes and resulting forest restructuring measures, lead to significant changes within the composition of raw material supply. As a result a noticeable increase of hardwood and a decrease of softwood availability can be observed. Although hardwood supply increases, usage stagnates and partially significantly decreases, leading to decreasing raw material prices, especially for mass assortments like oak or beech. Wood working industry is in a big part specialised in softwood processing. This specialisation entails a strong softwood demand, leading to softwood shortages whereas at the same time hardwood supply increases within the near future. To address an increasing hardwood supply and simultaneously enabling a value-added hardwood usage, novel products as well as technologies need to be evolved. Therefore a Central European Hardwood Centre for Technology, Product development, Innovation and Design shall be developed, including partners of the concerned areas. Wood K plus Tulln will appear as Lead Partner, connecting partners from science and industry within the Technopol Tulln area and Clusters from Lower Austria but also partners from abroad from the surrounding areas. A so called Technological Road Map for Lower Austria is serving as an initial impulse for a technological planning process, which is carried out in collaboration with experts from industry and science. The Road map functions as a kind of foresight model assuming that the future should be created proactively. As several examples from the past have shown, a Technological Road Map is a proven method to address future industrial challenges (ANONYMOUS 2003, 2005, 2006).