The second meeting of the SustForest Plus project was held this week at the Atlantic headquarters of the European Forest Institute (EFI), where the partners benefiting from the partnership met to report on the progress of the work and to plan the project actions in the coming months.

The day, which took place in Bordeaux on 9 October, was supported by the presence of Beatrice Gendreau, Forestry Councillor of the New Aquitaine Regional Government, who underlined the interest in the recovery of resin activity in the region and the importance of the initiative proposed in the SustForest Plus project for the creation of a brand guaranteeing the origin of European natural resin.

At this meeting, the Cesefor Foundation presented the document that will guide the drafting of the Strategy for European Natural Resin, prepared with the collaboration of a round table made up of more than twenty-five experts from the European resin sector.

In the coming months, the Portuguese town council of Proença-a-Nova, together with Cesefor and the rest of the project partners, will advance in the creation of REDsina Europe, a European network of resin-producing territories, as the manager of the strategy for European resin and with the vocation of becoming a reference and interlocutor to represent the interests of the sector before public decision-makers.

‘SustForest Resin Lab’

One of the main novelties of the project -exposed by the Spanish National Institute of Agrarian Research (INIA) at the meeting- has been the creation of a European network of experimental plots in resin material, which under the name 'SustForest Resin Lab' will collect in a database and a web viewer the relevant sites where experiments and resin research initiatives are developed. The SustForest Resin Lab will allow the sharing and diffusion of information among the scientific community, thus contributing to the coordination, orientation and acceleration of the resin R+D.

For its part, the Regional Centre for New Aquitania Forest Ownership (CRPF Nouvelle Aquitaine) presented the progress made in the creation of owner groups, in which it has worked together with the partners associated with the South Gironde Forest Producers' Group project and the Holiste company.

At the meeting held in France, other issues were also presented, among which those referring to the compatibility of the use of resin and other forest products stand out, pointing out that progress has been made in testing the characteristics of resined wood, both by CRPF Nouvelle Aquitaine and Fundación Cesefor. During the 2018 resination campaign, the Portuguese National Institute of Agrarian and Veterinary Research (INIAV) carried out the resination work on Pinus Pine to determine the interaction between resin and pinus productions in terms of productive yield.

On the other hand, the 2018 resination campaign has also served the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) to carry out comparative tests of resination stimulants in five locations in the main Spanish resin regions. The test has been supported by the Lurizán Galician Forest Research Centre, through the provision of one of the stimulant formulas tested.

The Portuguese municipality of Penela, also a member of the SustForest Plus partnership, reported on progress in calculating the carbon footprint of products derived from European natural resin, which is one of the products of SustForest Plus most demanded by the project's industrial partners.

On the other hand, it should be noted that the meeting had the active presence of representatives of partners associated with the project Junta de Castilla y León of Spain, and the union of municipalities Valdarno and Valdisieve of Italy. The next meeting of the project will take place in the municipality of Proença-a-a-Nova (Portugal), during the month of March 2019, within the international days foreseen in the project SustForest Plus, Los montes resineros: montes con futuro.

The meeting ended with a field visit in which they had the opportunity to get to know first hand the resin extraction system in closed container developed by the project partner Holiste  on its own initiative.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/translator