Many foreign companies and individuals from other countries do not know that the tree-length logging technology was invented in the USSR (Soviet Russia).
During the USSR, about 96% of the total volume of timber was harvested using the tree-length technology. In recent years, the harvesting of timber using tree-length logs has significantly decreased. The first experience of introducing tree-length timber harvesting dates back to 1948. The main motive for switching to the tree-length technology was the desire to do as little work as possible in the most unfavorable conditions – in the forest. This problem was very acute at that time. Many people had to be transported to the forest. Their working day lasted more than 10 hours, since the road to the forest and back took a lot of time. Manual branch cutting, the labor intensity of which is up to 40% of the total time costs of logging work, was performed mainly by women. The problem of organizing meals for employees and heating workers in such conditions was difficult. Therefore, the developers of the technology set themselves the task: a minimum of technological operations should be performed in the forest, only those that can be performed only in the forest. And the implementation of the remaining operations should be transferred to industrial sites located near the residential settlements of logging workers – at the lower warehouses.
Another motivation and task was the transition to the tree-length technology:
- the possibility of organizing work in two shifts during the primary processing of wood;
- the desire to replace the drive of machines and mechanisms based on internal combustion engines with an electric drive, which improved economic indicators;
- improving the quality of cutting wood raw materials with the production of the maximum amount of commercial wood and its high-quality sorting;
- arrangement of workplaces and the creation of more comfortable conditions for workers, organizing their food and rest.
The success of the implementation of the tree-length technology prompted many enterprises to transfer the pruning of branches to the lower warehouses by organizing the removal of wood by trees (with crowns). This technology was not widely developed at that time, since it was not yet possible to use the crown of trees usefully. However, a number of enterprises did not abandon it, gradually organizing the production of fuel and even technological chips from tree crown branches. At the experimental enterprises of “TsNIIME” the production of wood-fiber and wood-chip boards was organized using chips from branches as an additive to chips from trunk wood. This experience was successful. Thus, by now in Russia there is more than 75 years of unique experience in the implementation of the technology of harvesting and transporting wood by trees and the use of chips from branches.
The impoverishment and disintegration of Russian logging enterprises into many small pieces during the transition to market relations in early 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, led to a significant loss of the dominant tree-length logging technology. Small enterprises had no choice but to switch to a primitive technology of harvesting timber in assortments using gasoline-powered saws and skidding tractors with rope choker equipment. The stock of tractors left over from Soviet times allowed these enterprises to avoid buying new tractors for a long time, repairing old ones, assembling one out of two. The reduction in demand for new skidding equipment led to a reduction in its production and the degradation of forestry engineering, to its displacement by imported, often used equipment.
The main reasons for the transition of some Russian enterprises to the assortment technology are, in my opinion, the following processes:
- disintegration of the logging industry with the formation of a large number of small enterprises;
- small size of logging areas. The maximum size of logging areas has decreased by 4 times as a result of changes in the “Rules for harvesting timber” in 1994. The use of high-performance machines for tree-length harvesting in such logging areas requires their frequent relocation from logging area to logging area using trailers, which causes a negative reaction from timber industry workers and additional costs;
- the arrival in the timber industry complex of a large number of businessmen who are not familiar with the recent history of the development of the timber industry;
- loss of the management system of the timber industry complex and the destruction of the science of the forestry complex.
Which way is it advisable to develop logging technology in the country in the future? This is a strategic issue, since the transition to another technology is associated with huge material costs. Unlike Finland and Sweden, in the USA and Canada, which produce both systems of logging equipment, the tree-length technology, according to expert estimates, makes up about 50% in the USA (only assortment logging is possible in the Rocky Mountains), and 98% in Canada, since there are more flat forests and taiga, as in Russia. There is an opinion that with a wide variety of natural and climatic conditions, choosing any one technology for the country is impossible and even harmful. However, the recent experience of our country refutes this statement: for more than half a century, practically a single technology has dominated in our country – the technology of harvesting wood in tree-lengths. This experience has shown that the use of a single technology has enormous advantages both in terms of forest management and in terms of forest engineering. Large-scale production of logging machines reduced their production costs and, consequently, their price, facilitated the provision of spare parts and equipment repairs, which had a positive effect on the efficiency of timber harvesting in the country. This conclusion is confirmed by the experience of foreign countries: in Finland and Sweden, the assortment technology is almost 100% dominant. The use of the harvester-forwarder machine system in Scandinavian countries is caused, in my opinion, by the fact that the felling areas there are small private owners, and the forests are distinguished by the fact that most of them have undergone technical felling in a timely manner. Such forests consist of trees of approximately the same size and wood quality. When developing such forests, the performance indicators of the harvester-forwarder machine system reach the highest values.
In Russia, large and overmature forests predominate, in which no technical felling has been carried out. Such forests have the following structure.
The predominant structure of overmature mixed forests (European part).
Number 1 in the figure indicates mature coniferous and deciduous trees. These are mainly commercial timber. Number 2 indicates small-sized coniferous and deciduous trees with a breast diameter of up to 16-18 centimeters. These are mainly wood for the production of pulpwood – raw materials for the Pulp and Paper Industry. Number 3 indicates large-sized overmature, mainly deciduous trees. Such trees are the main source of firewood. The yield of commercial assortments from them is about 20%. Now such trees can be used to produce activated carbon, you can read about this in my article HERE
Assessing the given structure of trees by the volume of wood and the number of trees of each category in pieces, we can provide the following data, which can fluctuate in a fairly wide range.
Mature commercial trees make up about 50% by volume, and about 40% by number of the total number of trees.
Small-sized trees make up about 20% by volume, and up to ~ 50% by number of trees.
Large-sized overmature (firewood) trees make up about 30% by volume of the total volume, and about 10% by number of trees in the felling area.
As we can see, the trees on which logging machines, including harvesters, achieve high productivity make up about 50% by volume in our forests, and about 40% by number of the total number of trees.
As for overmature deciduous (firewood) trees with large branches, they are simply “too tough” for harvesters, the size of which is selected based on the size of the bulk of the trees. In order to increase the efficiency of use, firewood trees in the USA in the first half of the 70s of the last century began to be crushed directly at the felling sites into chips for various purposes by mobile chipping machines.
Due to the exclusion of labor-intensive operations for the production of assortments from the technology, the efficiency of producing chips from trees increased several times. Due to the crown of trees, the volume of produced chips increased by 12-14%. Chips were used as fuel, for the production of wood boards and even in the pulp and paper industry as an additive to “white” (barked) chips.
In the USA, chipping machines are produced for crushing trees directly at the felling site with a butt diameter of up to 37 inches (almost 1 meter).
The procurement and primary processing of small-sized trees deserves a special description. As is known, coniferous trees with a diameter of 8 centimeters at chest level and deciduous trees with a diameter of 12 centimeters are liquid in the European part of the country. The productivity of logging machines when harvesting small-sized trees drops sharply.
The cycle time for harvesting large-sized and small-sized trees, for example, with the LP-19 feller-buncher, is almost the same. But when harvesting a tree with a diameter of 30 cm at chest level, the machine packs 0.3 cubic meters into a bundle, and when harvesting a tree with a diameter of 8 centimeters – 0.03 cubic meters. The difference is an order of magnitude or 10 times less.
However, feller-bunchers are currently equipped with gripping and cutting devices with tree accumulators, which dramatically increases their productivity. But harvesters “cannot work” like that.
Thus, in our conditions, the harvester works practically idle 50% of the time, which brings losses in the engine life of the harvesting equipment and fuel consumption.
From the above it follows that in our conditions the “harvester-forwarder” machine system, with rare exceptions (when working in pine forests), will never work as efficiently as in Sweden or Finland. That is why this machine system is not dominant in the USA and Canada, where the forests are as unkempt as in Russia. Therefore, many small and medium-sized companies in Russia with an annual logging area of less than 30,000 cubic meters are economically ineffective and often go bankrupt. Especially in areas where there are swampy areas or peat soils, I recommend reading my article on this topic HERE
What is the way out of this situation? We can find the answer by analyzing the experience of the USA.
In the USA, small-sized trees are processed into “white” (debarked) chips for the pulp and paper industry, in a group method using delimbing-barking-chopping machines. The unit performs three operations: cutting branches and chopping them, debarking trunks and chopping bark, processing debarked trunks into “white” (debarked) chips for the pulp and paper industry. The advantages of this technology, compared to the production of chips for the pulp and paper industry from pulpwood, are obvious.
Due to the group processing of trees (small-sized trees are fed into the unit in packs by a hydraulic manipulator) and the exclusion of operations for the production of assortments (pulpwood) from the technology, the productivity of processing small-sized trees increases many times over compared to traditional technology. Simultaneously with the production of “white” chips for the pulp and paper industry, fuel chips are produced – a mixture of bark and wood particles from branches. Such a mixture is a fuel with a significantly higher combustion heat than high-humidity bark, which is obtained at the pulp and paper mill as a result of “wet” debarking of pulpwood in debarking drums.
With round-the-clock operation, the productivity of delimbing-debarking-chopping machines for processing small-sized timber exceeds 300,000 cubic meters per year. Currently, three US companies are known to produce such equipment. These machines (units) are quite simple to operate and repair. Russia can establish such production if such a task is set.
Let us briefly summarize the above. An analysis of the US experience in harvesting timber in stands that have not undergone thinning shows that in our conditions, almost half of the total volume of harvested timber can be processed into raw materials for pulp and paper, wood boards and fuel chips directly from trees. The production of assortments from this half of the trees is unnecessary, unnecessary work, which leads to an increase in costs. At the same time, a multiple increase in labor productivity is achieved compared to the assortment technology. Such a technological transition can make small and medium-sized logging enterprises with an annual felling area of 12,000 to 30,000 cubic meters more efficient.
For Russia, where overmature forests that have not undergone technical logging prevail, the experience of the US and Canada is very valuable and should be adopted. Processing of small-sized trees using delimbing-barking-chopping machines, as well as processing of overmature firewood trees into fuel chips or activated carbon, can be carried out not only in logging areas, but also in lower warehouses of logging enterprises, pulp and paper and woodworking enterprises, wood-panel factories. This will reduce transportation costs due to the higher woodiness of stem wood compared to chips. The efficiency of using equipment for the production of chips will increase due to the concentration of raw materials in the lower warehouse, coming from all developed logging areas (logging enterprises), and the absence of the need to relocate equipment from logging area to logging area. Speaking about the tree-length technology of timber harvesting, the founder of which is the USSR (the legal successor is Russia), it should be noted that at present it is used not only in the USA and Canada.
The technology has stepped into the southern hemisphere and has been developed in Australia, New Zealand and even Brazil, including in the version with timber removal in logs. As we can see, the technical scheme of a road train for removing logs, which was first created in our country, has been developed in the USA.
The analysis shows that the most effective for the conditions of Russia is the whiplash technology. Having adopted this technology from us, the Americans have significantly improved it. Now we will have to learn from them.
I would like to note the foresight of the heads of those enterprises that have preserved the whiplash technology in Russia. Compared to the ancient assortment technology, the age of which is calculated from the stone axe, the “outdated”, as Vologda specialists called it, whiplash technology is a child in the cradle, it is only 77 years old. Therefore, it has a high prospect for improvement and increased efficiency.
Taking into account the problems associated with the lack of logging roads and the removal of timber in whips along congested public roads, the whiplash technology can initially be implemented in the version – harvesting timber by trees, and removal – in assortments with the production of assortments in the upper warehouse using the processes described a little higher in my article. Now let’s see what logging technology is recommended by the “Strategy for the Development of the Forestry Complex of Russia” for the period up to 2030.
Quote: “Considering the existing competencies, the size of the domestic market and the availability of existing production facilities, logging equipment (harvesters, forwarders) is the most promising segment of import substitution. Less promising due to the low market size are the segments of wheeled skidding machines, feller-buncher machines and feller-skidding machines.”
In Petrozavodsk (Republic of Karelia), the production of Belarusian harvesters and forwarders has already been launched.
As we can see, everything is the opposite in the Strategy. And this is not surprising. The Strategy was hastily revised and without the participation of forestry science, which was destroyed after the collapse of the USSR. So it turned out, as Napoleon Bonaparte said: “Whoever does not want to feed his own army will feed someone else’s.” This applies to both science and forestry engineering. A forestry power, such as Russia, cannot live without forestry science and its own forestry engineering. Even in small Finland, they understand this, will this ever reach the Russian Government, the question remains open?!
Conclusion:
- The proclamation in the Strategy of the development of assortment technology for timber harvesting as a priority is a strategic mistake. Foreign investors entering the Russian logging complex must understand this and correctly build their technology for harvesting and deep processing of timber.
- In order to significantly increase the efficiency of tree-length technology for timber harvesting, the most promising for Russian conditions, it is necessary to take urgent measures to study and implement the best practices of the USA and Canada. It is necessary to organize a business trip for forestry specialists or individual companies to the USA and Canada to study this experience.
- Take measures for large-scale development of production of “green” and “white” (barked) chips as a means of increasing the efficiency of tree-length technology of timber harvesting and the use of these types of chips in the production of wood panels, the pulp and paper industry and in energy production. This will increase the volume of manufactured products and provide economic efficiency to new industries.
- And the Russian state needs to think about and then develop and implement a program for organizing the production of machines and equipment for tree-length technology of timber harvesting. Revive the science of the forestry industry to implement this program and provide financial support to domestic forestry engineering plants that produced machines for tree-length harvesting.
- I can recommend that foreign investors, when entering the Russian market, attract experts in the field of logging, lawyers and specialists in tax law to build the correct organizational structure of business in Russia. I recommend reading the article about “Registration or purchase of LLC and JSC by a person from an unfriendly state in 2024” HERE
The article was prepared by the expert of the “Geoburo” company, Andrey Kichaev, February 3, 2025.