The New Wood competition 2025: Forest industry sidestreams utilized to make construction products with a higher value added
Uusi puu – The New Wood Project shows what wood can do. The project promotes wood-based innovations and provides information about them.
Materials technology startup Fiberwood Oy develops surplus streams from forest industry into materials for construction and for added protection in packagings.
Built environment is the source of about 42 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Some of these are due to the manufacturing processes of rock and glass wool.
Established in 2019, the Fiberwood company became operative in 2022, and has developed a production technology to process wood and natural-fibre sidestreams into insulation materials, acoustic panels and protective packaging materials. The aim is to replace mineral- and plastic-based materials, as well as to find completely new uses.
The conventional practice in the forest industry is to burn sidesteams and biomass for energy. Fiberwood is among the innovative companies that use these resources in a more sustainable and an economically more efficient way, to make products with a higher value added.
The materials developed by Fiberwood are a storage for the atmospheric carbon sequestered in wood, for the life span of the products made from these materials. After use, the products can be recycled to make new panels or used in soil improvement.
The company aims at promoting fossil-free construction activity based on renewable natural resources and to point the way to a more sustainable construction industry. At the moment, Fiberwood is constructing a demo production line and a R&D centre in Järvenpää near Helsinki, and continues to develop its products in partnership with several actors from Finland and abroad.
Innovations based on wood fibre can significantly boost the value added and price per weight unit of forest industry exports. Fiberwood aims at increasing the value of each kilogram of exported weight, from the current rate of less than one euro to two or three euros. According to the company, this could award up to three times the current financial gain with less wood used, while also easing the pressures related to wood availability.
Forest.fi and New Wood are initiatives of the Finnish Forest Association.