Spain | Asturias is positioned as a destination to attract forestry investments

Companies, forest owners, professionals and knowledge centers Madrid addressed the evolution of the sector and the wood industry at the conference The New Forestry Model of Asturias: Innovation, Future and Investment Opportunities promoted by the Economic and Commercial Office of Asturias. The Principality also presented lines of action of the Asturias Forest Plan 2027-2041 which, in the words of the Minister of Rural Environment and Agrarian Policy, Marcelino Marcos, will allow progress towards a more orderly and sustainable management of forests and improve the mobilization of resources. The document will promote forest management, the grouping of owners, the improvement of infrastructure and access, administrative simplification, forest health and fire prevention under the paradigm that a better managed forest is also a forest with greater capacity to generate resources, economic activity and employment. Planning will provide greater security regarding the future availability of raw materials and will favor the connection between the forest and industry. The objective is to promote a value chain capable of generating more activity and employment and increasing the added value associated with forestry resources. In this sense, Marcos has highlighted that Asturias has a diversified forestry chain, which ranges from forestry and harvesting to transportation and transformation, as well as companies specialized in forestry machinery and technological and knowledge centers. To these capabilities, he defended, are added the availability of industrial land, investment support instruments and a favorable logistics position, elements that make up a environment prepared to host new sawing projects, industrialized wood construction, technical products, carpentry or energy use of biomass. The conference projected all these capacities, reinforcing the connection between Asturian forest resources, the productive fabric and investment opportunities. Intervening were, among others, Javier Vigil, general director of Forest Management of the Government of Asturias; Asunción Cámara, vice president of the Spanish Society of Forest Sciences, professor at the University of Oviedo; Sandra Sánchez, manager of the Asturias Biomass Technology and Business Pole (PTEBI); Miguel Rodrigo López, forestry director of Ence Energía y Celulosa, and María Lorenzo Conto, director of Energy and Business Development at Grupo Hunosa.