This study describes the Swedish hardwood sawmill industry with respect to its structure, raw material, production and market conditions in order to seek ways of increasing the competitiveness of the industry. Fifteen sawmills were studied through observations and interviews. The Swedish hardwood sawmill industry creates job opportunities in sparsely populated areas and uses a biological raw material which is important for environmental biological diversity. Any decrease in the use of this material will mean a drop in the incentive for forest owners to cultivate deciduous forests. Today, the hardwood sawmill industry is experiencing problems in securing the supply of raw material of the desired quality, i.e. without knots and discoloured heartwood (red-heart or brown-heart). To increase the competitiveness of the Swedish hardwood sawmill industry, the raw material supply must be secured. Production should be geared towards products demanded by the market, and new markets need to be entered.

Sawn hardwood is required by the market to be homogeneous, even in texture and colour, but the products produced by Swedish hardwood sawmills exhibit a wide variation in characteristics. This makes it difficult for hardwood sawmills to find profitable markets for all their products. By developing new products with other properties for the building industry it may be possible to utilize hardwood more efficiently and increase the prices. This would result in higher ecoeffectiveness (defined as value in relation to environmental impact) of the forest-related business system by giving an incentive to grow deciduous forests, which leads to richer biological diversity. Diversity is fundamental to achieving sustainable forestry. At the same time, other less ecoefficient materials in buildings may be replaced. Exploring the requirements of the customers is essential before developing new products, in order to maximize the value of a product. In this study, the requirements of interior hardwood products in the Swedish house-building industry were studied in interviews and through questionnaires. The most important requirements, ranked higher than price, are delivery on time, shape stability, packaged products, rapid delivery and accurate moisture content. The results make it possible to focus on critical factors to gain market shares for hardwood as an ecoeffective building material.

The production of knot-free wood is important since the market demands wood without knots for reasons of both appearance and material properties. This work describes a simulation of the removal of knots from star-sawn timber and square-sawn. The efficiency of the two methods is compared in terms of the length of the knot-free components obtained and the volume yield.

The simulation is based on data for trees and logs taken from The Swedish Stem Bank. These data are then used to simulate the sawmill process in a computer program called the Virtual Sawmill. Data related to the boards obtained are then used in a MATLAB model simulating the cross-cutting of knots.

Simulated star sawing of logs with a top diameter exceeding 230 mm gave a mean knot-free component length of 417 ±321 mm, while the mean length of knot-free components for simulated square sawing of the same logs was 298 ±122 mm. The volume yield of knot-free components from the two sawing patterns was 91 % for star sawing and 87 % for square sawing. For timber with cross-section dimensions of 38 x 75 mm2, the mean length and yield of knot-free components from simulated star sawing were 451 ±349 mm and 90 % respectively. In simulated square sawing, the corresponding values were 263 ±197 mm and 82 % respectively. This shows that star sawing has a potential for the production of knot-free timber.