I am Alberto Dotta, I am graduated
in forestry science and I work at the Consortium Forestale.
I am a director of the Consortium Forestale
of Alta Val di Susa
with the headquarters in Oulx in the Province of Turin,
Piedmont region. We have been using
Wood-Mizer sawmill for about twenty years
with a great satisfaction.
The Сonsortium Forestale of Alta Val di Susa
was founded in 1953 by 14 municipalities
of the Upper Susa Valley
for better management
of municipal forests.
I also would like to notice
that we manage the activity related to
natural hazards, not only to cure
their effects,
like floods, landslides,
and avalanches,
but also to try to prevent
these events.
The wildfires can be catastrophic.
So we develop
the fire prevention management,
that becomes more and more important
unfortunately recent years,
due to climate changes.
Therefore the fire prevention is
a tool we believe fundamental
for the forest management.
Here we are in the pine forests
belonging to the municipality of Oulx.
The municipal pine forests are managed since 1953.
The pine forest is important both
for fire protection
and also for wood production in our area.
This zone is particularly at risk
with forest fires.
Here we are at experimental site
that will become soon
a real construction site
where we are trying to understand
what interventions are best
to reduce the risk
of forest fires
that unfortunately happened
in other parts of this valley.
Therefore the goal is, on the one hand,
to change the characteristics
of the fire by reducing biomass
inside the forest.
We take out about 30 to 40 percent
of the biomass
ensuring the stability
of forest and changing
the fire characteristics.
This allows
teams on the ground
to successfully extinguish fires.
This intervention
helps to reduce
the fires.
Then we take action to reduce
the negative effect of natural hazards.
We have
to heal and replenish
a forest.
In the early 2000s,
when the Consortium Forestale
was transformed into
a special company,
we ordered
an outside service.
One of the possibiliies
to enhance our activity
has appeared.
It is the possibility
to maintain the raw wood material
which we receive from our forest.
We decided
to use these
raw materials,
and then we decided
to invest in machinery.
Thanks to a loan of the Piedmont region
we are equipped with machines
for logging timber
and a sawmill Wood-Mizer LT20
that was purchased just for adding value
to the raw material which we get from
our woods.
We use the timber
very often just to do
maintenance of local infrastructure
on the roads.
We started to use this sawmill
as mobile, but with the increase volume
we decided in the end,
that it is more convenient
to manage the sawmill at production site.
So we transformed it from a mobile machine to
a stationary machine.
We operate the sawmill
with increasing satisfaction.
The merits of this sawmill
are numerous.
The sawmill has a small size,
and it is comfortable for operation.
We use it
not as a mobile machine,
but as a stationary sawmill
processing wood
inside our yard.
This sawmill is reliable. I must say
that we do not have had major problems
apart from the ordinary and normal maintenance,
and wear of mechanical parts.
So during 20 years we have never had
great needs except the
blade maintenance.
So this sawmill has
returned the investments
numerous times.
The raw material cost is about
25-30 euros per cubic meter,
but the cost of timber is
600-700 euros per cubic meter.
Of course, there is a bit of wastes,
or let's say,
loss of raw material,
but the added value is important for us.
Especially important because
we are
in a small town,
and the forestry
brings us
the raw wood material
which we can
transform into a finished product.
So we benefit from different steps
within the structure
guaranteeing jobs for local communities.
In fact, we started
with the only four forest workers,
and at the moment
we have
twenty workers
in our consortium.