Project description
A second life for wooden waste
Solid wood furniture is higher in quality, lasts longer and costs more. Such furniture is in high demand, posing a threat to forest resources. Meanwhile, just 15 % of the wood from old unused houses is recycled due to hard-to-process and low-quality materials. The EU-funded GREEN BOARD project will reverse this trend through a pioneering, sustainable production of superior-quality wooden products from recycled, eco-friendly materials. It will use cutting-edge technology based on the thin layers of the valuable old wood on high-quality plywood matrices. It will increase recycling yields to 60 %, enabling cost reduction, customisation, sustainability and high durability of unique-quality products creating a new market. The project is in line with the European resource-efficiency policy.
Objective
Resource efficiency is a central theme for the EC’s 2020 strategy and especially forests are among our most precious
resources. Currently, large quantities of the old wood are being recycled from buildings that are no longer needed, but the
recycling yield is only 15% due to the low quality of the materials. This leads to increased prices and waiting times for highquality
furniture and interior products which rely on solid/old wood sources.
At JGrabner we have invested over €5 million in the development of our technology, creating a solution to this problem that
only uses thin layers of the expensive old wood on top of high-quality plywood substrates, thereby increasing the recycling
yield to 60%. Our innovative process creates toxin-free, wood-based materials that not only rival the visual and haptic
experience of solid and old wood products but also surpasses them in terms of costs, customizability, durability,
sustainability and availability. These quality standards cannot be reached by any of the competing technologies. With
GREEN BOARD, we will bring our technology to the interior and furniture sectors, thereby creating a new market for old
wood materials. We offer never-seen-before applications of old wood, such as floorings or wall interiors which have been
elusive till now, due to the special needs of the bulk old wood materials. With GREEN BOARD, we can customize any wood
material to the needs of our customers. With the customer demand for high-end wood products rising and the €361 billion
furniture and interior market growing at an average rate of 10% annually, we’re perfectly positioned to use this unique
business opportunity in Europe. With a funding of €1.1 million in funding for GREEN BOARDs Phase 2, we will achieve €5.4
million in profits over 3 years after the project’s completion with a ROI of 3.9 and create 25 jobs during JGrabner’s growth
process, all while promoting the sustainability of the EU's high end wood industry.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
4661 ROITHAM
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.