The Wood Material Science and Engineering Research Programme (2003-2007) is designed to promote the competitiveness and sustainability of the forestry sector and forest-based industry by building multidisciplinary knowledge base enabling development of innovative, eco-efficient and cost-competitive products, processes and services.
The programme combines the resources of the Finnish and Swedish research communities and forest cluster enterprises. Establishing well-functioning collaboration between Finnish and Swedish wood material researchers is essential, since scientific innovations in this area rely on a large number of sciences, besides forestry and traditional wood and fibre technology. At the same time, active networking of producers and users of knowledge and technology is a prerequisite for speeding up product and process development work in the forest-based industry.
The competitiveness of the European forest cluster has relied on continuously improved optimisation and efficiency. However, as this development is now coming to an end, innovations and better cooperation within the cluster will be needed to secure the future success of the forest cluster. A strong multidisciplinary knowledge base is a prerequisite for innovations in this field.
The Wood Material Science and Engineering Research Programme (2003-2007) is a Finnish-Swedish research programme funded by the Academy of Finland, the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas), the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland, Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, and the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA). The total budget of the research programme is about EUR 20 million.
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