Forestry operations, performed by sawmills in the past, have now been outsourced to a multitude of very small production units - 830 in all. Over 90% of them are one-man businesses. Forestry operations have been significantly modernised in recent years, particularly since the 1999 storm, with the wide-scale adoption of mechanisation.
Conifers are the main harvesting timber (1 813 000 m3) and the conifer species are principally used in industry (264 000 m3) and the annual firewood harvest is put at 156 000 m3. The volume of firewood harvested for own use is put at 1 500 000 m3 (source SERFOB 2005).

DÉBARDAGE PAR CÂBLE

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Rhône-Alpes is the region with the highest number of sawmills in France It has 450 mainly small units, employing a regional workforce of 1 900 people. In production terms, it is in 2nd place behind Aquitaine with 1.2 million m3 of sawmill products. Fragmentation characterises the sector with 2% of the businesses accounting for 30% of the production. These units each produce over 20 000 m3 of sawmill products per year and employ 20-50 people on average. At the other end of the scale, 85% of sawmills employing 3-5 employees more or less match these sawmill production figures with a unit capacity of under than 4000 m3 (CEP study, 2000).

The flagship products in Rhône-Alpes are mainly produced from conifer conversion. Conifer sawmill product volumes are slightly up at 1 153 000 m3 whereas deciduous products are tending to drop – down to 57 000 m3 (Source: SERFOB 2005)

RHÔNE-ALPES SAWMILL

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Know-how - finding for a sawmill in Rhône-Alpes