Komatsu Forest is investing even further in the future and is building a completely new development department focusing on electrification of forest machines. Source: Timberbiz
With the initiative, the company wants to take the lead in the forest machinery industry and help reduce net carbon dioxide emissions from its forest machines. The initiative is fully in line with the company’s goals, where sustainability is fundamental to the entire business.
“We have a production facility that is close to carbon neutral, and we are working with the same goal-awareness to reduce CO2- emissions from the use of our forest machines. The vision is to reach a ‘net zero emission worksite’,” Erik Nilsson, CTO at Komatsu Forest said.
Opening up for electrification in the forest is a ground-breaking technology step for Komatsu Forest, which at the same time poses major challenges. Since the machines work off-grid, there are many aspects to consider when developing new machine solutions. For the machines to be able to use different types of energy media, energy distribution solutions are needed for the workplace in the forest.
Peter Hasselryd, VP Marketing & Sales at Komatsu Forest said that he sees an increasing interest in customers and partners in reducing the environmental impact of forest machines. So the company aims to reduce CO2- emissions from products by 50% by 2030 and expect to have something on the market before then.
“We are happy to lead the way, but cooperation and partnership are an important part of the transition in the forest,” Mr Nilsson said. To succeed, the development of new technologies and new system solutions that can offer our customers the ability to use renewable energy sources is required.
The new development department will be expanded gradually, and the company is looking for people with several different types of competencies.
“We are looking for electric vehicle developers, hardware and software developers, computational engineers, application engineers in energy, hydraulics and mechanics, but we also see that we need new competencies in areas such as vehicle certification and testing, all with a genuine interest in developing products and solutions for a sustainable future,” Mr Nilsson explained.
