Metsän puolella funding awarded for 13 new projects 

The projects will look at issues such as innovation and transformation efforts in the forest industry. 

In the fifth round of Kone Foundation’s Metsän puolella initiative, 13 projects were awarded funding, totalling 2.2 million euros. Together, 244 applications were evaluated.  

Among the funded projects, docent Anni Huhtala and team will analyse innovation and environmental policy within the Finnish forest industry (€254 100). In recent years, investment in the forest industry has focused on the production of low value-added pulp, but at the same time the industry expects to improve its productivity through innovation and new products. Huhtala’s project will investigate how these efforts to modernise are reflected in the patents and innovation activities of the Finnish forest industry. The sector’s private and social returns will be compared to it’s R&D investments and public subsidies. This will help to determine whether current forest and environmental policies have had an impact on the economic output, environmental impacts or clean technology innovations of the Finnish forest industry. Green innovation in the forest sector will be compared with other industries in Finland and with forest sectors in key competitor countries. 

“As ecological crises escalate, the forest industry cannot afford to remain locked in the status quo. What is needed next is a breakthrough for a sustainable forest industry with innovative, high value-added products that bring more prosperity to Finland. We believe that the Metsän puolella projects will contribute to the transformation of the forest industry and at the same time increase social acceptance of sustainable forest use” says Mari Pantsar, the initiative’s Change Manager. 

The film project by Ang Siew Ching (€110 900), also draws on innovation to raise questions about why lignin, a by-product of the forestry industry, is still being burned in energy production when it could be used to make high value-added products. The film envisages an alternative future where lignin-based battery technologies are a commercial success and a source of prosperity for Finland. 

In building a new, more sustainable forest industry, it is also important to understand history. A project led by Ella Viitaniemi (€448 100) studies the everyday use of forests in southern Finland in the 1700s and 1800s, when most timber was used to meet basic human needs. The aim is to build a holistic understanding of the use of forest resources in Finland in the pre-industrial period, when the material culture of entire human communities depended on wood for everything from tools to home heating. 

Read Mari Pantsar’s column: Towards a sustainable breakthrough in forest industries

Browse all of the Metsän puolella projects