Mari Blokhus Nordtun

Gjenoppbyggingen av Ukraina vil kreve massive, raske og ikke minst bærekraftige løsninger. Her er tre et naturlig valg. Gjennom vår deltakelse på Rebuild Ukraine ønsker vi å presentere klyngens samlede kompetanse og teknologier for industrialisert trebyggeri, som kan gi rask og kostnadseffektiv oppføring av boliger, skoler og infrastruktur.

“Vi ser et enormt behov for effektive, klimavennlige byggeprosesser, og den norske treindustrien sitter på unik kompetanse innen modulbasert og industrialisert bygging i tre. Dette er systemer som er skalerbare og kan implementeres raskt, noe som er avgjørende i en gjenoppbyggingsfase,” sier Knut Amund Skatvedt, prosjektleder hos NWC.

Gjenoppbyggingen av Ukraina vil kreve massive, raske og ikke minst bærekraftige løsninger. Her er tre et naturlig valg. Gjennom vår deltakelse på Rebuild Ukraine ønsker vi å presentere klyngens samlede kompetanse og teknologier for industrialisert trebyggeri, som kan gi rask og kostnadseffektiv oppføring av boliger, skoler og infrastruktur.

“Vi ser et enormt behov for effektive, klimavennlige byggeprosesser, og den norske treindustrien sitter på unik kompetanse innen modulbasert og industrialisert bygging i tre. Dette er systemer som er skalerbare og kan implementeres raskt, noe som er avgjørende i en gjenoppbyggingsfase,” sier Knut Amund Skatvedt, prosjektleder hos NWC.

On October 15-18, the construction trade fair Bygg Reis Deg takes place in Lillestrøm, and several of Norwegian Wood Cluster’s member companies are represented. One of them is Bergene Holm, which in addition to having its own stand, has been nominated for the Norwegian Construction Industry Innovation Award for its EKSAKT production facility.

– “We work continuously with product development and innovation. In recent years, there has been a particular focus on waste-free construction sites, and this is the background to our investment in EKSAKT,” said Innovation Manager Mona Gran Sukke Bergene Holm when we visited the new facility last year.

Here you can read more about EKSAKT

The Circular Lumber Foil project recently visited Gausdal Treindustrier and Gausdal Landhandleri – two important partners in the work to make the construction industry more circular.

So far, we have collected around 3 tons of used plastic film, which is now being sent to Norfolier GreenTech for recycling and conversion into plastic granules. The granules will then be sent to Haagensen Plast, which will produce new plastic film with 10%, 30% and 50% recycled plastic.

The new plastic will then be returned to Gausdal Treindustrier and Gausdal Landhandleri for practical testing, so that we can evaluate quality and function in real applications. The variant that performs best could become a new standard for more sustainable packaging in the building materials industry.

A project like this requires close collaboration throughout the value chain – Thank you to everyone who helps put circularity into practice! 💪♻️

Project partners

Norfolier GreenTech, Haagensen Plast, Gausdal Treindustrier, Gausdal Landhandleri, Norwaste, Blåne, Litra Containerservice, Norwegian Wood Cluster

The international conference Forum Wood Building Nordic took place in Malmö on September 23-24, 2025. Nordic cooperation and circularity are among the themes of the conference. Thus, the conference opened with a presentation of the interreg project Circular Bioeconomy Arena (CBA).

Project with a circular focus

Elin Appel of Paper Province explained the background to the clusters’ joint project. – “After a couple of rounds of Interreg projects where counties and regions on both sides of the border led the forest bioeconomy projects, we wanted to take the lead ourselves. We were keen to develop a joint Interreg project with a stronger focus on companies. That’s why the Circular Bioeconomy Arena project is owned by Paper Province and Norwegian Wood Cluster. And we are very pleased that we were granted support from the EU, Swedish-Norwegian Interreg funds and the county councils on the Norwegian side, so that the three-year project could start in 2023. said Appel.

A stronger circular focus is needed

– There is a need for more buildings with wooden structures, while at the same time there is increased competition for the raw material. Therefore, we need to extend the lifetime of the materials to a much greater extent and use the wood materials several times before they are finally burned. Through our CBA project, we are contributing to this development,” explained Mari Blokhus Nordtun.

– “It’s also an important point that the Circular Bioeconomy Arena has many partners in addition to the clusters. We experience great benefit from sharing experiences and utilizing common expertise and networks across the border,” she said.

More themes

The Forum Wood Building Nordic conference addresses challenges and opportunities for the wood industry, both in terms of competitiveness, increased circularity and modern architecture in tall wooden buildings. A number of speakers highlighted important topics for wood buildings, including vibration and acoustics, connections, fire resistance, facades and material combinations.

Conference program:
Forum Wood Building Nordic

Splitkon AS is the country’s largest manufacturer of load-bearing structures in solid wood and glulam and has production facilities and warehouses in Åmot in Modum municipality. Splitkon has approximately 70 employees.

Common challenges and sharing

– “We have followed the development of the Norwegian Wood Cluster with interest and see that the activities and network are very relevant to Splitkon. Now we want to become part of the cluster and aim to participate actively in most of the cluster’s professional groups,” says CEO. Morten L. Johansen in Splitkon.

– The industry’s need for documentation is an example of an area where we expect to benefit from participating in the Norwegian Wood Cluster. A clearer and unified use of resources within sustainability and the environment is an important area for Splitkon,” says Johansen.

– We also believe that the internationalization of our members’ businesses should be facilitated, and we are pleased that NWC is now establishing its own specialist group in this area,” says Johansen.

He points out that Splitkon has relevant experience that the company wants to share in the cluster.

– The Norwegian Wood Cluster has members from large parts of the value chain, and we look forward to getting to know and building long-term networks with NWC members. Perhaps we will eventually also come up with specific collaborative projects with other members,” says Morten L. Johansen of Splitkon.

Deliveries to many well-known buildings

In recent years, Splitkon has made a name for itself with deliveries to many well-known wooden buildings in Norway. These include the commercial buildings SporX in Drammen and Krohnen in Bergen, the Fyrstikkbakken 14 apartment building in Oslo, office buildings such as HasleTre in Oslo and Lumber Teknopark in Kristiansand, as well as several primary schools.

We also visited kvarter Återbruket in Gothenburg, a project with ambitions of 50% reuse, and where, among other things, Moelven-produced glulam beams from a nearby ice rink are used in the construction. We also got to experience the World of Volvo, an impressive building, circular in shape and carefully adapted to its surroundings, with a load-bearing system in glulam and a large proportion of CLT (cross-laminated timber) elements. Now we’re ready to increase reuse in the construction industry, together.

The reuse conference organized by the interreg project Circular Bioeconomy Arena in Gothenburg on 1-2 September had “New roles and logistics” as its own theme, and here the participants had the pleasure of hearing Jon Lille-Schulstad, Director of Business Development at Ragn-Sells AS, talk about the results of the testing carried out in Norway.

Concrete testing and analysis

Like the Norwegian Wood Cluster, Ragn-Sells has been a partner in the extensive Green Platform project SirkTRE, which has now been completed. SirkTRE has aimed to map and establish a circular value chain for recycled wood by facilitating and demonstrating the reuse and material recovery of recycled wood in practice.

– Normally, used materials are processed in such a way that they are impossible to recover for reuse. We have participated in SirkTRE and the research parallel CircWOOD to contribute insight and experience in the hope of finding concrete solutions that can be scaled up. In CircWOOD, we have facilitated analyses, provided data on quantities and qualities of wood waste, as well as information on handling and sorting,” said Jon Lille-Schulstad to an attentive audience in Gothenburg.

Data capture in Moss and Hamar

NIBIO carried out picking analyses at Ragn-Sell’s facilities in Moss and Hamar. A total of 46.4 tons of waste was reviewed. The picking analysis showed that the wood waste from construction had a higher proportion of unpainted wood or wood waste than that from households/recycling stations. The wood waste that came from industry and service industries mainly consisted of wooden packaging in the form of pallets.

– “While disposable pallets and packaging are basically excellent raw materials for board production, it is more demanding to collect and handle used wood materials,” said Jon Lille-Schulstad.

Experiences from the construction site

– “We learned that in order to collect recyclable materials, you need committed construction management and good information and training for your employees. In addition, the sorting solution at the construction site must be easily accessible,” said Jon Lille-Schulstad.

– Ragn-Sells tested several solutions for collecting materials on construction sites. “Our experience was that with the right solution, we increased the degree of filling, we had few deviations and managed to collect wood materials of good enough quality to go straight to reuse,” said Jon Lille-Schulstad. He explained that NIBIO and Treteknisk’s visual quality assessment of the collected recycled wood showed that more than 50% had good or excellent quality.

Cooperation between Ragn-Sells and Norsk Massivtre

– “As part of the SirkTRE project, we tested the use of collected recycled wood at Norsk Massivtre. Our experiences were so interesting that we are now developing this collaboration further after the SirkTRE project has been completed,” said Jon Lille-Schulstad, Director of Business Development at Ragn-Sells AS.

Once a year, the Norwegian Wood Cluster invites its members to a senior management meeting. This year, the meeting was held at Losby Gods. The program was interesting, the attendance was high and the breaks were diligently used for mingling – just as the cluster wants.

Tips for cluster development

– “It’s easy to create a cluster, but it’s difficult to become a good cluster,” said Walter Qvam, long-time industry leader and chairman of the board. He himself has worked with one of the world’s most complete clusters, the Norwegian maritime cluster. This cluster has included everything from equipment suppliers, brokers, shipowners and insurance to entrepreneurs.

– It’s easier to come up with new ideas than to discard old ones. Patterns must be broken. Goals must be set. Resources must be used. The cluster should have complementary characteristics and emphasize good knowledge dissemination. There must be a shared understanding of innovation needs and opportunities. You also need to have a professional network across the cluster and a close dialog with research institutes, nationally and in the EU,” said Qvam.

– “It’s important to remember that clusters are perishable, they’re never finished. The cluster is an organism that needs to be evaluated from time to time. I strongly recommend that the cluster builds cross-disciplinary networks. This is very important and rewarding, because the professionals in the companies need to get to know each other. The cluster should have its own initiatives in the areas of sustainability, digitalization, automation and data collaboration. The cluster should also try to measure what has been achieved in terms of innovation and reduced transaction costs,” said Qvam.

– “It’s good to see that the Norwegian Wood Cluster has made the right decision when we established five specialist groups. They work across the board and consist of representatives from both companies and academia. We have also taken initiatives in several of the areas highlighted by Walter Qvam,” said NWC chairman Jan Tore Meren.

The SFI has lifted SINTEF Manufacturing

Chief scientist and center manager Sverre Gulbrandsen-Dahl talked about the journey of SINTEF Manufacturing over the past ten years.

– At Raufoss, we envisioned becoming a dynamic cluster within five years. However, it took 20 years before we got there. In 2014, SINTEF Manufacturing became host to an SFI (Center for Research-based Innovation). This has given us a boost. The vision is to show that sustainable and advanced production is possible in high-cost countries. None of the owner companies have their own manufacturing research department in Norway, so the companies are contributing funds and their own efforts to the SFI,” said Sverre Gulbrandsen-Dahl.

A tsunami of EU rules

A lot is happening in the EU that affects the forest and wood industry. Magnus Berg, Head of Industrial Policy at Skogsindustrierna, was invited to provide an update on the EU’s climate and environmental regulations and current EU processes that affect the forest-wood value chain.

– During this term of office, forestry issues have really hit home in Brussels. The EU has the ability to pass many laws in the areas of climate, environment and trade, but formally has no right to legislate on forests. In practice, however, this is not the whole picture. Climate decisions still affect the forest and the forest industry, and we experience this from time to time. For example, we see that the European Commission focuses more on biodiversity than on the positive climate effect of building in wood,” said Magnus Berg.

He reminded the audience that once the decision-making process has been completed in the EU, new laws and regulations must be implemented in the individual countries.

– Unfortunately, this means that the interpretations in Sweden go in an even worse direction than Brussels intended, from the perspective of the forestry industry,” said Berg.