Chronicle of the year 2023
The year 2023 has included both speculation on how Vreten can best meet the forest and landowner's challenges and investments for the future. We asked CEO Kristian Jonsson to share his thoughts on the past year and tell us about the future plans.
As far as 2023 is concerned, one innovation in particular has received a lot of attention.
- The thorough testing of waist locks for the Vreten 900 has been exciting! There is always some extra effort needed when building innovative solutions that are not available on the market today. It requires being very careful and trying to anticipate most scenarios that may arise. We are betting for future good times for the self-employed forest owner and focus on developing new products that will increase our customers' efficiency and make their lives easier.
Meeting the challenges of forest and landowners and meeting demand head-on is an important part of how Vreten's products are developed.
- It has been a challenging year with both road leveler and forestry trailers. The weather has made it difficult for our customers to schedule road loading and the forest industry is still suffering from bark beetle infestations. Stubbornly low prices for forest raw materials at the same time as there have been extremely high prices for processed wood products have also caused problems.
The trend among self-employed forest owners has long been to switch to mini forwarders, something we see starting to be questioned a bit. They are very agile machines in the forest, but the transportation between the parcels is not so optimal. Here we see that more of our customers are buying more land and then have to transport themselves further. Then a modern forestry trailer is hard to beat.
Today you can get them with most of the equipment you can get on a mini forwarder, so you don't have to feel like you're missing anything with a forestry trailer. Maneuverability has also been significantly improved with our new waist lock, which makes it much easier to reverse with the trailer, and when driving forward, the trailer tracks much better behind the tractor. You can also use the tractor all year round for other tasks.
As far as this year's innovations are concerned, we must mention the waist lock here too. It provides greatly increased efficiency and a much smoother user experience when using the product for the right purpose and in the right way," says Kristian.
Sustainability in several areas
Something Vreten has also worked on during the year is the ongoing project with sustainability as part of daily operations, both in terms of switching to more environmentally friendly alternatives, but also in terms of the working environment for sustainable employees.
- For some years now, we have been working on a sustainability policy and have a sustainability plan that is revised every six months, where we follow up on set goals and set new ones. We work hard to conserve resources, for example through our strong focus on using high-strength steel, but also through our production process. We have worked hard on our own consumption of electricity and district heating.
In 2022, we installed large heat pumps in the factory and installed a lot of automation that controls, among other things, lighting. In January 2024, we will replace around 350 fluorescent luminaires with LEDs, which will both make better use of energy and increase the lighting in our factory by around 3 times.
We also focus a lot on sustainable work environment for all our staff. Among other things, we use a protective gas in our welding process that minimizes ozone formation. We also continuously invest in tools that make work easier for our staff, both large and small. In January, we are installing another welding robot, this time a so-called Cobot - a welding robot that works together with the operator in a different way than our larger industrial robot and removes monotonous processes.
Looking to the future, exciting news awaits Vreten on several levels.
- A new website will be launched in early 2024! Our previous website has been anything but good, when the focus has been on the products and its implementation in our factory.
The launch of the waist lock and a new forestry trailer in the 10-ton class is another hard-to-beat news, it will be really fun to launch these. But also the implementation of the new Cobot in the welding department will be incredibly fun to get into use.
We will also be releasing a new chassis in the 10-ton size class in early 2024. It contains some innovative ideas that will be of great benefit to our customers! Keep an eye out! This is going to be damn good! concludes Kristian.