As interest in alternative energy from woody biomass continues to grow, Georgia’s forestry industry is poised to take advantage of increased demand for wood products.

John Wells, associate chief forester at the Dry Branch-based Georgia Forestry Commission, the state agency for protecting and conserving forest resources, told GlobalAtlanta that the state’s 24.8 million acres of forests make it a target destination for innovative forestry companies.

“(The U.S. states) are all technologically about the same,” he said. “But in terms of getting companies in here I think we’re way ahead, mainly because of the forestry resource that we have here.”

Mr. Wells added that more than 5,000 products are made at least in part from tree parts, including plywood, veneer, paper pulp, toothpaste and the wood chips and pellets that go into producing ethanol and biodiesel.

The most recent forestry industry delegation to visit Georgia included a representative of Lidkoping, Sweden-based Silvaro AB, a company that manufactures heavy machinery for cutting and transporting wood chips.

Silvaro CEO Henry Carlsson said that he is exploring the opportunity of placing his first U.S. sales office in Georgia to take advantage of the resources and industry already here.

He added that the company’s most distinctive product is the CS 440 Chipset, a heavy tractor equipped with a grabbing arm on the front that can pluck fallen logs and branches out of the forest, guide them through a chipper located underneath the vehicle’s cab and store the chips in a collecting bin on the back.

Per Wennerberg, export coordinator for Ecoex, a regional environmental development council for the Goteberg region of Sweden who accompanied Mr. Carlsson to Georgia, said that the state is poised to take advantage of worldwide growth in the wood pellet market.

Mr. Carlsson and Mr. Wennerberg met with several Georgia-based biofuels companies during a tour of the state Jan. 28-Feb. 1 hosted by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia.

The delegation viewed a chipping plant in Macon owned by Monticello, Ark.-based Price Companies Inc., the firm contracted to supply wood chips to Range Fuels, which is to build the nation’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant in Soperton.

In Savannah, they met with representatives of the Herty Advanced Materials Development Center, an initiative began by the State of Georgia nearly 70 years ago to develop forest resources into commercial products.

The delegation also met representatives of Savannah-based Fram Renewable Fuels LLC, a company that Mr. Wells said is exporting wood pellets harvested in Alabama and Georgia to Europe.

Mr. Wells said that Georgia wood pellets have a ready market in Europe due to legislation there requiring a certain amount of energy to be produced from renewable sources.

He added that the domestic market for wood pellets as an alternative energy source is set for growth, predicting that legislation requiring renewable energy use would eventually be enacted in the U.S.

“It’s not really unique to Europe. There seems to be a trend in that direction here,” Mr. Wells said, adding that some northeastern states have already passed legislation requiring use of renewable energy.

He also said that Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co., is preparing to build a plant to produce electricity by burning wood and that the Forestry Commission is undertaking a project with the University of Georgia to research wood-burning heat for chicken coops, which could be expanded to commercial and residential buildings if successful.

Mr. Wennerberg said that the largest market for wood pellets in Sweden is in heat plants.

Mr. Wells was confident that increasing demand for wood as a source of alternative energy would not strain Georgia’s resources or cause deforestation.

“We’re planting more trees than we’re cutting. We’ve got more acres now than in 1987 and we’ve got more volume per acre,” he said. “It’s sustainable, I’m convinced of that.”