ProPopulus Team
Assopannelli, the Italian Association of Panel and Semi-finished Wood Products Manufacturers, announced a long-term project aiming at improving defining strategies to strengthen and give new impetus to the Italian poplar and forestry market. The project was presented last November at the First Italian Wood Forum held in Riva del Garda (Italy).
The project envisages, as a first step, a feasibility study to support poplar cultivation through the creation and/or recognition of financial instruments. These financial instruments aim at recognizing carbon credits and, through them, at “autonomous” support that necessarily goes from environmental sustainability to achieve economic sustainability.
In order to develop funding strategies for the procurement of national (Italian) raw material, this recognition would lead to an increase in Italy’s planted areas. All of this will be useful for enabling the supply of an entire production chain that goes from production to marketing and selling panels (thus increasing the Italian export quota), to fruit and vegetable packaging up to finished products such as furniture.
The intention is to develop a financial system, which will allow farmers to find immediate value in poplar cultivation, without having to wait the 10-15 years necessary for cutting and related marketing, allowing them not to have to resort to an annual investment with their own funds but that these come from the previous plantings. This study will also serve as a Best Practice pilot project on other wood species and will offer numerous information sources potentially useful to the forest and poplar sector, related to the construction of a large-scale productive forestation of wood resources. The project also involves a start-up in the poplar-producing area of the Padano-Veneto plain, with subsequent implementations in the forest sector.