Sustainability

Our factory is located at Braskereidfoss, Innlandet, Norway. The company is a part of the Byggma Group and our activity regarding sustainability is strongly anchored in the Groups sustainability work. Our business is based largely on using renewable forest materials to create durable products while growing new forests in the harvested areas as a way of contributing to increasing carbon sequestration in products. Awareness of our own business activities is more important than ever now that we can see climate challenges beginning to take hold. It is important for us to work sustainably. Beyond our financial goals, we need to be aware of our impact on society and the environment.

The UN's sustainable development goals
The UN's Agenda-2030 initiative has set 17 sustainability goals for sustainable development. In our work to develop a sustainability strategy, we have chosen to prioritise and work with the following 8 UN sustainable development goals:

 Carbon sequestration
Growing forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. In sustainable forestry, we harvest forests as raw materials and then plant new trees to provide the basis for additional carbon binding. The wood in our products stores with significant amounts of carbon. For this reason, we believe that to use these raw materials responsibly, we have to create products that last a long time. Using wood fibre to create durable products is an important contribution to increasing carbon sequestration in forests and wood-based products. 

Certified wood
We use large quantities of wood to produce our panels. We procure this as by-products from sawmills. We purchase from sustainable sources and most of this is certified in accordance with PEFC.

PEFC Traceability Certification provides independent third-party verification that the wood is from sustainable forests. Each stage of manufacturing and distribution must carry traceability certification. If any stage is not certified, the traceability chain is broken and the product cannot be sold as PEFC certified.

Future opportunities – returned wood – reusing wood waste
As previously described, at Forestia we have developed a project where we can clean timber from demolition and turn it into industrial wood chips and make new products from the wood waste. As the project relies on a certain amount of public funding to make it profitable, we have been lobbying politicians for some time now to use state funding regulations to establish climatesmart solutions in line with our neighbouring countries. In April 2022, Innovation Norway awarded Forestia AS MNOK 80 as funding to build a treatment plant for timber from demolition. This investment is extremely environmentally friendly and makes Forestia chipboard circular. The investment also reduces risk for Forestia, since it makes us less dependent on raw material supplies from the sawmills.

Forestia AS
Damvegen 31, 2435 Braskereidfoss, NORWAY 

Phone: (+47) 38 13 71 00
E-mail: forestia.kundesenter@byggma.no