The Wood Consortium of northern Lombardia is an association which operates since 2006 to plan initiatives to promote the growth and development common strategies of business to protect the interests of the sawmills in the Valtellina, Valchiavenna Valcamonica, Valsassina and Alto Lario.
The Consortium is composed by 17 sawmills that produces elements in wood for carpentry and construction, and products for wood packaging. Currently 9 sawmills are involved in the project that are sourcing of timber mainly from the Valtellina and Switzerland. Some companies have developed a specific production unit for roofs and wood structures for the construction industry.
The Consortium in 2014 processed about 160,000 cubic meters of wood (85%, 9% larch and spruce pine 6%), employing 255 staff with an annual value of 47.6 ML €. The characteristic products will be:
• fir or larch beams for carpentry (common product to all companies) with the cubic meter of sawn as Functional Unit.
• fir, larch and pine roofs with high energy savings with square meter of roof (with specific physical and mechanical characteristics) as Functional Unit.
One of the stated aims of the Consortium was to establish itself as a single point of contact with institutions and stakeholders, in order to simplify the comparison between the parties and to define common policies. In this regard, the Consortium has submitted a project to Regione Lombardia counting on regional development funds (ERDF).
The regional executives and technicians, who shared with the Consortium the presentation of the project, asked the representatives of the Consortium to evaluate the opportunity of participating to the LIFE Prefer project as additional Pilot group. Among the objectives of the Consortium it is also the prospect to develop regulations and guidelines to uniform processing and marketing of products in order to mature social and economic criteria of high quality and professionalism, in order to develop adequate tools to support an overall enhancement and growth of the territory.
After a series of phone calls, and the direct promotion and contact with Federlegnoarredo (the trade association at the national level), an ad hoc meeting took place (on March 6th 2015) between Regione Lombardia, Ambiente Italia (technical assistance of the Region) and the leaders of the Consortium, who confirmed the interest on the PREFER project.