LT70

Approximately 50km northeast of Rome, Stefano Chini's grandfather started a family business in 1929 selling hand-split railroad ties. Stefano's father was raised in the woodworking industry, and through his hard work, he built a successful firewood company. Stefano began managing the business full-time in 2007. As the third-generation owner, he is already thinking about his own son’s future with the family business.

“My name is Serge Jourdan. I own a portable sawmill in the Haut-Verdon valley in Beauvezer, in the French Alps. Why did I choose the LT70 sawmill? Because it’s easy to move around. I work in a mountainous area, and when I go along the mountain passes and forest tracks at 2400 m altitude, I can always manage my sawmill. This machine is running virtually every day of the year!”

What is the best sawmill for working in mountainous areas? Sawmilling in the Alps requires much character and determination from the local sawmillers. Towing sawmills up mountainous roads can be challenging, even for the most experienced sawmillers. Apart from the skills and practical knowledge about wood, they also need the proper sawmilling equipment to do their job well.

Sweden is a country with rich traditions of woodworking and reverence for forests which cover two-thirds of the country. With forests properly maintained, the wood-processing industry has a leading position in the Swedish economy. Many foresters, sawmillers, and woodworkers rely on Wood-Mizer equipment that helps their owners to run successful woodworking businesses throughout Sweden.

Not long after Columbus had discovered the new world, Europeans began to order exotic American plants for their gardens. In 1601, the royal gardener of the French king Henry IV planted a tiny black locust seedling. Now 420 years old, that tree is the oldest in Paris!

This family operated sawmill in Terengganu, Malaysia shows how even small companies can benefit from modern and more efficient sawmilling machinery.

Simostranda Stav & Laft is a timber frame construction company located outside of Oslo. The company is operated by Sveinung Bergan and Einar Holm, who have worked together as partners for 22 years.

Kim and Christian Zibulla family from the small town of Berkum in Germany run a global engineering company. The fascination with the old half-timbered architecture led them to the situation that several years ago they purchased at auction a dilapidated building listed as an architectural monument.

In Dunfermline, a little village north of Edinburgh, Scottish Wood has grown substantially over the past 20 years. They are a social enterprise - a charity which owns a sawmill and supplies local builders with locally grown timber. “We are primarily a hardwood sawmill. We cut homegrown, Scottish grown hardwoods and also some larch and Douglas fir,” Jim Birley from Scottish Wood says.