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The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) has moved products, inspection, and training to the front of its Global Lifting Awareness Day (GLAD) campaign.

As #GLAD2024 approaches on Thursday 18 July, LEEA is sharpening its focus on the importance of surrounding these three cornerstones of lifting with high quality.

GLAD is an established event where its members, manufacturers, and suppliers lead those sharing material that promotes safe and high quality load lifting across the world. Social media posts, videos, articles, and in-person activity are bound together by the hashtag, #GLAD2024.

Ross Moloney, CEO at LEEA, said: “It’s about the ongoing battle between cost and quality. We all know that buying decisions are made for a multitude of reasons, but we want people to make sure those choices are always based on quality. It is perhaps easy for some not to think there’s any difference in quality and that all equipment and services are the same; we’re saying this isn’t the case. It’s why we constantly refer to skills, standards, and high levels of competency. This is a specialist industry, where high quality is a minimum requirement.”

LEEA has already circulated three graphics based on high quality products, inspection, and training, all of which attach the trifecta to existing #GLAD2024 publicity. The message chimes with LEEA’s organisational vision to eliminate accidents, injuries, and fatalities, placing further emphasis on skills and employment, which had emerged as front-running themes when the fifth GLAD drive was launched.

Moloney added: “We are in a risky industry, and these are three key ways by which we can eliminate risk; accidents occur when these three things fail. Product matters, but because it was once compliant doesn’t mean it always will be, hence the need for ongoing inspection, and this must be conducted by a high quality individual, who has been trained to the highest standards.

“This is where the LEEA logo fits,” Moloney continued. “Joining our association means you become associated with high quality providers. Our members go through an audit where we help them to check and improve their processes and practices. And on an ongoing basis our members access training developed and devised by 1,000 members worldwide. We’re not making this content up ourselves — it’s written by the industry, for the industry. Above and beyond GLAD, it’s a clear market signal to end users: if you are involved in lifting, look for the LEEA logo.”

Moloney delivered a well-received presentation, centred on GLAD, to the Associated Wire Rope Fabricators (AWRF) Spring General Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee last month (April). It was a delegation united in understanding that there is no low-risk job in the lifting industry, and the entire global community must be trained and competent. Further, it is a sector that is offering work opportunities, especially to younger people looking to become trained and qualified.

“Skills in our industry pays the bills,” roared Moloney. “You get trained and qualified, and there are work opportunities in our high tech, high quality industry. A perception endures that lifting is all about heft and physicality, but our people fight gravity and do dangerous things. They all need to be trained and competent, so there are no unskilled occupations. We provide training and we strongly encourage end users to make sure that anyone they work with is trained and work ready. Look at our TEAM card initiative for evidence.”

• Anyone interested in celebrating the lifting industry on 18 July can pledge their support by completing a short form on the dedicated GLAD website https://globalliftingawarenessday.com/partner-form

 

Caption: Global Lifting Awareness Day 2024 — #GLAD2024 — will uphold high quality products, inspection, and training on 18 July.

 

To read more LEEA related posts click here.

 

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The post LEEA Leads High Quality #GLAD2024 appeared first on International Forest Industries.

The Swedish Forest Industries Federation (SFIF) has joined the IUFRO World Congress as major partner, marking a strategic collaboration to enhance forest research and foster global knowledge exchange. Source: Timberbiz “We are excited to join the worlds’ largest forest event of 2024, and the largest in Sweden ever. Our mission aligns perfectly with the Congress’s goals of promoting collaboration, knowledge sharing, and sustainable forestry practices,” says Viveka Beckeman, director general of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation. The SFIF will host a stand at the Congress Exhibition featuring member companies Holmen, SCA, Stora Enso, and Södra. These industry leaders and pioneers will showcase their latest advancements in sustainable forestry and forest management and engage with attendees on key issues facing the sector. Södra, a cooperative of forest owners, focuses on value creation and sustainable forestry practices. Stora Enso, a global leader in renewable solutions, emphasizes innovative materials and bio-based products. Holmen, known for its sustainable forest management and renewable energy initiatives. SCA, Europe’s largest private forest owner, renowned for its commitment to sustainability and resource efficiency, will present their unique contributions to the industry. The partnership between IUFRO World Congress and SFIF highlights the importance of collaboration in the forest sector, particularly in promoting sustainability and innovation. The pavilion will serve as a hub for networking, discussions, and the exchange of ideas among industry professionals, researchers, and policymakers. “We believe in the power of collaboration and knowledge exchange to drive sustainable forestry forward. The Congress provides an excellent platform to showcase the innovative work of our leading forest companies and to engage with the global forestry community,” says Ms Beckeman. At the Congress, SFIF´s aims to be a meeting point for networking and dialogue, sharing of research and innovation results, and to showcase the Swedish forest and its products – all the way from growing trees to circular products. Attendees will have the chance to learn about cutting-edge research, technological advancements, and best practices in sustainable forest management. The IUFRO World Congress 2024 has garnered significant support from various partners, including IKEA, WWF, and Formas, one of Sweden’s largest research councils. Additionally, strong governmental support from the Nordic and Baltic countries, as well as other stakeholders like major universities, underscores the broad collaboration and shared commitment to showcasing and discussing forest research for sustainable development.    

With a little helping hand, Forestry England is letting nature transform more than 8,000 hectares of land in four of the nation’s forests. Taking a new approach to managing forest landscapes, the organisation is creating four wild areas where nature recovery will be at the forefront while still producing sustainable timber and welcoming visitors. Source: Timberbiz Forestry England is the country’s largest land manager with over a quarter of a million hectares in their care and a long history of successful wildlife conservation. This puts them in a great position to work across large landscapes to restore nature. This new work, letting nature take the lead, will over decades make them the most valuable places for wildlife across England. And longer-term, biodiversity benefits will spread out across other forests and the wider countryside. Kielder Forest in Northumberland will have the biggest new wild area, covering at least 6,000 hectares. Here, Forestry England will restore a fully functioning upland ecosystem by expanding native woodland and scrub and creating more open habitats including restoring peatland and natural water courses. Through pioneering integrated land management, Forestry England will create an innovative model of modern productive forestry. This will balance nature-first approaches alongside sustainable wood production, ensuring a truly resilient forest for a changing environment for generations to come. Other wild areas are Newtondale in North Yorkshire, Purbeck in Dorset, and Neroche in Somerset. Each unique landscape will have its own mix of activities all designed to restore natural processes and increase the diversity and abundance of wildlife. Helping nature recover may include reintroducing lost wildlife including butterflies, rare plants, pine martens and beavers, rewiggling rivers, introducing wilder cattle or even moving fungi to restore soil. Visitors to the wild areas will have a wilder, more immersive nature experience in a landscape where space is given for wildlife to move and thrive. “There is an exciting unpredictability about this work in our four wild areas. We simply don’t know exactly how each of them will change over time or the detail of what they will look like. But this uncertainty is a positive part of being experimental and allowing natural processes to shape each landscape in the years ahead. We are confident that whatever happens these areas will become more nature-rich, with benefits for neighbouring landscapes,” Andrew Stringer, Forestry England Head of Environment, said. “We’re not choosing to return one or two lost species. This is about allowing all parts of the jigsaw to fit back together so an entire ecosystem can function well across large areas, from apex predators at the top to microscopic soil organisms beneath our feet. “We will intervene less in these four wild areas, giving nature the time and space to reshape the forest landscape. Forestry will still be an essential activity, creating canopy gaps and varied structure, acting just like the lost megaherbivores of the past. Over time the benefits will be enormous in terms of climate resilience, reversing biodiversity loss, providing greater natural capital benefits to society such as natural flood mitigation, soil health, air quality and carbon storage. It’s an exciting new chapter in our biodiversity work in the nation’s forests.” Forestry England will work alongside many expert partners to create the wild areas. Some will be involved in hands on nature restoration activity, others in scientific data gathering and analysing the progress in each area. The soil eDNA baseline data gathered in all four wild areas will be free to access as part of Forestry England’s commitment to open data sharing, collaboration and building a strong evidence-base for wilding activities. The wild areas work is being supported by Defra’s biodiversity funding, with corporate partner Forest Holidays contributing funding over 5 years toward creating the wild area in Kielder Forest. Forest Holidays are Forestry England’s first major biodiversity corporate partner.

On 14-16 May 2024 the SINTETIC Project annual meeting took place in Brașov (Romania) hosted by two project partners, the Transilvania University of Brașov and ASFOR. SINTETIC – single item identification for forest production, protection, and management – is the second largest project funded by Horizon Europe in the field of forestry. Source: Timberbiz It aims to maximise the benefits of digitalisation in the timber value chain simultaneously improving efficiency, sustainability and transparency (thus avoiding the illegal entry of wood in the value chain). The identification system developed by SINTETIC can start with a physical marking approach using a log hammer or with an RFID tag, allowing for the traceability of each log from forest-site to further-processing companies. The adoption of timber quality sensors allows to integrate the tracking data with added-value information, enhancing the efficiency of the whole value chain. The project will develop a new system that will enable customers buying wood products to track them all the way back to the individual trees in the forest from which they were made. The ambition of SINTETIC is to develop and implement a digital platform that can deliver a comprehensive data management scheme for the whole forest value chain. The core of the proposed system is a ground-breaking solution for the complete traceability of forest products based on the first-ever integration of five state-of-the-art technologies. The systems feasibility will be demonstrated at eight sites found in Finland (2), Romania (2), Sweden, France, Spain, and Italy. Each individual item will be allocated and have attached a unique ID which in turn will be digitally transmitted to a central geodatabase. This will enable each item to be tracked as it moves along the forest value chain. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) system will also enable measurements of yield and output to be related to any earlier point in the value chain. Historical climate data, silviculture treatments, and forest stand descriptors will also be included. Central to the working of SINTETIC will be the integration of five separate tracking technologies, namely: Radio Frequency Identification which will allow standing trees as well as round wood to be tagged, a punching code impressed directly onto the wood with a hammer, a CT log scanner at the sawmill, optical vision scanners (fingerprinting) and finally after production a bar/QR code that will enable identification through the retail process. The last step is crucial as it will enable operators and customers to trace the wood element in the finished product back to a specific forest and an individual tree.

Dr Murry Cave, Principal Scientist at Gisborne District Council, New Zealand will share his groundbreaking research on the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and the role of Large Woody Debris (LWD) in Tairāwhiti. His findings will be presented at the 5th International Wood in World Rivers Conference in Gaspe, Quebec. Source: Timberbiz Dr Cave’s work gained international attention after a presentation at the New Zealand Rivers Conference in late 2023. Professor Ian Rutherford from the University of Melbourne was in the audience and was particularly struck by the significance of LWD during cyclones Hale and Gabrielle including the loss and damage to bridges, community impact, and the tragic death of a young boy on Waikanae Beach after Cyclone Hale. “Professor Rutherford felt this story needed to be told to an international audience and I was invited to present two papers at the conference,” Dr Cave said. The first is on the impact of LWD on Tairāwhiti and the second outlines a novel methodology for determining the relative contribution of various woody types to LWD in NZ. Dr Cave says he developed this methodology after Cyclone Cook in 2017, which left a trail of woody debris from the forests to the sea, particularly in Ūawa and Tolaga Bay Beach. In addition to the conference, Dr Cave plans to visit the British Columbia Ministry of Forestry and the Forest Protection Agency and look at a forest land debris flow predictor tool developed by a major British Columbia geotechnical engineering consultancy on his way to Quebec. “There is a lot we can learn from the British Columbia experience. In particular, the parallels between Canada’s First Nations role in forestry and the role of Whenua Maori in Tairāwhiti.” The 5th International Wood in World Rivers Conference will take place from June 10 to June 14, 2024, in Gaspe, Quebec. Dr Cave hopes his research can contribute significantly to the global understanding of LWD dynamics and its implications for river ecosystems.