Naujienos

*Baltic timber lorries to help Sweden

The Swedish Government is prepared to grant an exemption for Baltic timber lorries in order to permit their use in Swedish regions hit by the storm. Another five hundred timber lorries are needed for saving storm felled timber in Southern Sweden from deterioration.

The Swedish Government must grant an exemption from the transitional rules in the Treaty of Accession in order to permit timber lorries from the Baltic countries, for example.

In Sweden only road haulage companies registered in EU are permitted to handle ordinary domestic traffic. Before May 2006 road hauliers from the new Member States do not count as EU-companies for that purpose. The government has already granted an exemption to permit Baltic ships to transport storm felled timber within Sweden.

The hauliers' branch organization "Sveriges Åkeriföretag" (Swedish Road Hauliers' Federation) and the union " Transportarbetarförbundet" (Swedish Transport Workers' Union) are of the opinion that Swedish hauliers will manage the timber transports without taking in foreign companies.

The total number of Swedish timber lorries is about 1 500. If all those lorries were used, hauliers could manage to get all storm felled timber from the forest in 450 days, says the Swedish Road Hauliers' Federation.

The Swedish Government imposes a time limit of 500 days, but forest owners say that it will be too slow and too expensive.

We believe that it will be possible to get the timber to the roadside, but unless we can get it further on before next summer, it will have very little commercial value. Besides, we fear the fallen timber will be an excellent nursery for a lot of different pest insects. Later on they will settle in standing wood and make the problem even worse, says Mr Leif Brodén, CEO of the timber company "Södra Skogsägarna".