Wood is a durable building material that is easy to work with. Log buildings utilise wood in one of its most beautiful forms. Many of us have admired the grain patterns, warmth and atmosphere of logs in new and old log buildings. In addition, wood is a renewable natural material that during its life cycle either binds or stores carbon.
Sawn timber supplier UPM Timber and small home and log house supplier DEN Finland both understand the uniqueness of wood and share a desire to ensure a responsible production chain. Responsibly managed forests form the cooperation’s first link, and at the end of the chain, you will find log houses with a life cycle from tens to hundreds of years. The appreciation of wood that UPM Timber and DEN share is evident, for example, in the careful use of raw materials at every stage of the supply chain.
Finnish families own the majority of forests
The supply chain starts in the forest. About 3/4 of Finland's land area is forest. Private individuals own 43 per cent of the forest land and the state about 35 per cent, according to the Finnish Forest Centre. The country’s forests can rightly be called a national asset, as there are about 550,000 private forest owners and an even larger group of Finns are affected through family bonds.
Every tenth Finn is therefore practically a wood producer. One of them is architect Ilkka Halinen, who, in his 40-year career as a planner and former city architect of Jyväskylä, among other things has helped raise the appreciation of timber construction through architectural competitions.
As a forest owner, Ilkka cooperates with UPM Metsä, which provides UPM Timber with logs for sawing. In principle, a log sold from Ilkka's forest may have come to the UPM Timber Alholma sawmill in Jyväskylä and continued to the DEN Finnlamelli factory in Alajärvi for further processing into logs for buildings.
“A high degree of refinement, wood construction and innovations inspire me both as a forest owner and an architect, although I also appreciate traditional Finnish log construction,” says Ilkka.
The tradition of timber construction is alive not only in Ilkka’s childhood home built in the 1800s but also in his son, who is also an architect specialising in wood building.
Wood is a long-lasting building material that stores carbon
Previous generations hardly thought of carbon storage when they built houses, but their homes have functioned as such for more than a century. Ilkka's childhood home, made of logs, has already passed to the next generation of the family, and eventually, Ilkka will also pass the forest estate on to his son. Ilkka has entrusted the main responsibility for managing the estate to UPM Metsä as a contract customer and particularly to Hannu Nyrhilä Responsible, Forest Customers. Based on his extensive experience, he knows both the forest owners and their forests well.
“Most forest owners want to pass their forests on to the next generation in as good or better condition than they inherited them,” Hannu describes his customers' mindset.
UPM supports this way of thinking. As a contract customer, Ilkka receives all the expertise and support that a forestry professional can provide, but ultimately, he decides how he wants his forests to be managed.