Wood – The original all-rounder: From Tree to Material
When it comes to the Koehler Group, sustainability and profitability go hand in hand. This is largely made possible by wood, a renewable material. By joining forces with strategic partners and using cutting-edge technology, we make sure to make use of this material as responsibly as possible while securing local and regional value creation as a result.
Creating value out of "leftovers"
One example of how we make sure to reduce material waste to an absolute minimum can be found in what we do at our KATZ site in the German municipality of Weisenbach. It all starts with thinning, where foresters mark trees that should be removed from a forest as part of their regular forest management activities. It’s a useful practice, as it ensures that sturdier trees with higher quality will get more light and space to grow. The wood harvested from thinning is then sorted by grade and straight trunks are sawn into boards, dimensional lumber, and planks and used to make durable products such as building lumber and furniture.
Since the trunk diameter gets smaller as it gets closer to the top, the corresponding sections make for excellent pulpwood for our wood pulp board. Basically put, we use logs that are too thin for furniture and building lumber and pulp them and process them to get the aforementioned wood pulp board. The result? Extraordinary beverage coasters that absorb moisture from counters and tables all across the world. But things don’t end there: We directly reuse offcuts from production, and used board can be disposed of as wastepaper. This means that wood fibers can be reused for several cycles until they are too short for recycling, at which point the corresponding wood and fibers can still be used as a source of energy!
Find out more about Koehler Group’s commitment to sustainability here: https://www.koehler.com/en/sustainability