/ Wood trade and forest services / Request an offer on wood trade / Harvesting and thereafter

Harvesting and thereafter

In most wood trade, the purchaser is responsible for harvesting. When concluding the deal, the parties agree the date by which the purchaser must harvest the trees from the forest. At Metsä Group, harvesting and wood transports are handled by our professional contract entrepreneurs. We value a good harvesting job in the forest.

Harvesting is carried out within the period agreed in the wood trade agreement. When exactly felling begins depends on the harvesting conditions, resources, wood reserves and wood use at our mills.

We send two text messages concerning the felling operations to the wood seller before the work begins: the first around two weeks before harvesting; the second on the day on which the harvester goes to work.

A forest worker felling trees with a chainsaw is a rare sight in Finland these days. More than 95 per cent of the wood we purchase is felled using a harvester.

Näin puunkorjuu etenee

  1. 1

    The harvester operator plans the progress of work in the forest, and the location of the tracks used by the harvester and forwarder.

    The operator takes into account the terrain, land carrying capacity, weather conditions and any other special features of the felling site.

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    The harvester operator fells the trees, lops the branches, and cuts the trunks into saw logs and pulpwood.

    They also grade them in the forest next to the track, where the forwarder operator picks them up and carries them to the side of the forest road. The harvester operator places some of the tops and branches over the tracks. This protects the terrain and tree roots from damage caused by the machine.

    If the forest owner or Metsä Group’s forest specialist has not indicated the location of retention trees, the harvester operator decides which trees to leave as retention trees.

    A harvester cutting a pine trunk.
  3. 3

    The forwarder operator collects the trees and transports them to the forest road.

    The forwarder operator sorts different grades of wood into different piles along the roadside to ensure the logging truck driver can easily load the right items.

    Roadside storage must not be located near an electric power line, and the loading of trees in general must be safe for the driver and other road users.

    A forwarder transporting trees from the thinning site.
  4. 4

    The trees are picked up and transported to the mills by timber lorry.

    Wood from a single felling site is typically transported to many different mills: softwood pulp goes to a different mill than hardwood pulp, and pine logs to a different mill than spruce logs.

    If the site produces veneer logs, they are transported to yet another mill for upgrading. The logging residue used for renewable energy production – branches and tops, that is – are taken to the energy plant. This ensures that we use every part of the tree efficiently, and that nothing goes to waste.

    A timber lorry loading logs on a forest road.
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    The forest owner is welcome to follow the harvesting, but the safety guidelines must be followed.

    Please remember that the safety distance to a harvester at work is 90 metres.

    Instructions for a safe visit can be found here.

    A forest specialist and forest owner walking around the felling site.

We value a good harvesting job

Our harvesting and transports are handled by Metsä Group’s professional contractors. In harvesting, we comply with forest and nature conservation legislation, the criteria of forest certification, and the Finnish recommendations for good forest management.

A good harvesting job is important for both the forest owners and us. We oversee the quality of harvesting through self-monitoring performed by the operators and our forest specialists and through official inspections carried out in collaboration with the Finnish Forest Centre. We regularly collect feedback on the results of harvesting from forest owners.

Our transport entrepreneurs transport the wood from the side of the road to the mill. Because wood from a single site is transported to different mills, the roadside wood stores are visited several times. This also depends on the global market situation for end products. We monitor the quality of roadside storage and the condition of roads. If we damage the road, we restore it to the condition it was in before the wood collections. Please remember that the safety distance during wood loading is 20 metres.

The measurement certificate

When the site the wood trade concerns has been felled and the trees measured, a measurement certificate is submitted to the forest owner. The recipient usually receives the measurement certificate when the trees are still awaiting transport on the roadside. The certificate and its appendix are the wood purchaser’s report to the seller, indicating that the measurement has been carried out according to legislation, and that felling has been performed as agreed. Metsä Group always appends a summary to the measurement certificate and provides a detailed log itemisation on request.

When studying the measurement certificate and the appendix, have the wood trade agreement and the related appendices close to hand. If you have concluded an electronic wood trade with us or are Metsä Group’s owner-member, the wood trade documents are available in electronic format in Metsäverkko.

The measurement certificate is also used to collect the voluntary sales promotion fee for the Finnish Forest Foundation. You can read more about it here.

This link provides an example of the measurement certificate. The example calculation includes the largest possible bonus for wood trade and forest management services. If you have any questions about your measurement certificate, contact the forest specialist with whom you concluded the wood trade.