BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY”: this is the commitment of the European Sawmill Industry. The EU Sawmill industry is confident that traceability is beneficial both for companies and the consumers, providing better quality for wood and its products. Using technology to trace the movement of timber guarantees transparency & legality and ensures that the supply chain data is 100% accurate from the forest to the sawmill plant.

The first Evergreen Innovation Camp explored innovative and financially viable solutions for tracing timber. The ability to transparently trace each individual tree from its harvesting point in the forest through to its arrival at the sawmill is becoming increasingly important for sustainable wood supply and hence for the timber industry. Today’s consumers want to know where their timber products come from.

Team "Tree ID" was the winner of the Evergreen Innovation Camp hackathon. In 48h they developed a timber tracing concept, based on a digital forest. First, a mobile laser scanner is carried through the trees. This creates a digital 3D datbase with each tree, based upon the trunk's contour, as well as the distribution of branches. When parts of those trees arrive in the saw mill, they can be matched and thereby be traced back to the stump.

Second place was awarded to team "Smeasure", who programmed on-site a working algorithm for branch recognition from scrathc. Combined with a growth-ring analysis, this gives enough unique data points for recognizing the log in the supply chain. To make the application easy, the camera, the CPU and a GPS module are integrated into the forest workers' tape measures.

Third place was won by the "Logsmiths". They developed a smart marking hammer. It applies an RFID-label that automatically registers the GPS coordinates, and other unique data.

Copy of the Press Release is available here.