Each year, Troldtekt produces huge amounts of bark when spruce logs are debarked and chopped up to produce wood wool. Unlike the rest of the tree, the bark cannot be used for acoustic panels, and therefore ends up in large piles on Troldtekt’s factory site. It is then sold to be used as bark mulch and for soil improvement.
The sight of all the heaps of bark, which is essentially a waste product, got Tommy Mosgaard Jensen (44) thinking when he came on a company visit to Troldtekt as part of his training to become a production technologist. He decided that, as part of his final examination project, he would look at the possibility of using the bark to create new value within, for example, the furniture industry.
Huge potential worldwide
Tommy Mosgaard Jensen has worked with wood and furniture production for over 20 years, and therefore knows a lot about production with chipboard and MDF. At the same time, sustainability and the Cradle to Cradle principles feature prominently in his syllabus, so he quickly saw the potential in saving resources and creating added value by finding a new use for a residual product.
“I’ve previously toyed with the idea of making furniture from crushed wood, so finding an alternative use for the bark was a natural follow-on from this line of thought. I spoke, for example, with a master of a guild from the wood industry who said that it’s not just Troldtekt but businesses all over the world that produce large volumes of surplus bark. So there’s huge potential,” says Tommy Mosgaard Jensen.