Raurica Wald: Combined effort to successfully promote the use of wood

The three-storey office building housing the Energieholz-Zentrum in Muttenz is a timber-frame construction that could be extende

S-WIN (Swiss Wood Innovation Network) visited Raurica Wald at the end of October in the context of its "Top Programme Wood 2016" series of events.

The three-storey office building housing the Energieholz-Zentrum in Muttenz is a timber-frame construction that could be extended upwards. It is characterised by its simple, functional design. (Photography: Raurica Wald AG, Muttenz)

The Raurica Wald AG holding company, domiciled in Muttenz, brings five enterprises together under one roof: Raurica Holzvermarktung, Arba, Raurica Immobilien, Holzkraftwerk Basel and Fagus Jura. All of them share a desire to promote the sustainable use of regional forests. Their wide-ranging business activities create added value for forest owners and investors. Thanks to their efforts, forestry and the timber economy can count on the steady sale of wood.

The history of Raurica Wald can be traced back to a momentous natural event - the storm Lothar, which wreaked havoc in Swiss forests on 26 December 1999. It left behind heaps of timber felled by the storm in Northwestern Switzerland and brought wood sales to a near standstill, a situation that persisted for years. Things only started to improve with the founding of a central, resource-efficient wood marketing organisation, Holzvermarktung Zentrale Nordwestschweiz AG (HZN AG), in 2004. Its innovative logistics and sales structure buoyed the regional timber market and led to the founding of Raurica Waldholz AG. This was followed by a spate of rapid investments from which emerged today's Raurica Wald AG.

The highly informative event held on 25 October in Muttenz is likely to be remembered by the participants for a long time to come. The chances of Raurica Wald AG successfully continuing its business activities are looking good. In the company's 2015 annual report, the financial journalist Björn Zern writes as a guest author: "The current trend is to create local and regional solutions or markets - this is also of interest to the construction sector because building and living close to nature are becoming increasingly popular. Using timber from Swiss beech forests for construction instead of timber from Africa is in line with the measures to reduce harmful greenhouse gases agreed at the Paris Climate Conference."