Regional responsibility
At HS Timber Group, taking regional responsibility means showing respect for the community and people. We are committed to our employees, as well as to their communities and the surrounding regions. After all, it is not only our employees, but also our regional suppliers and business partners who make our economic success possible.
HS Timber Group sees itself as a responsible employer and as an economic driving force, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas. In Romania, we are one of the largest and most competitive companies in the forestry and wood processing industries.
We buy around 6% (2019) of the harvested wood available on the market in Romania. Through our activities in Romania alone, we have created approximately 4,000 more jobs in upstream and downstream sectors9 in addition to our own 2700 employees.
For HS Timber Group, complying with all legal requirements and contributing to the community with our taxes and duties is a given.
We are also keen on actively promoting the sustainable development of the communities and regions in which we operate. Providing support for social and healthcare facilities, as well as for schools and education programmes, is especially important to us.
We are keen on making sure that the softwood we work with comes from sustainable forestry. What that means to us, as we are not doing any harvesting ourselves, is that we need to actively maintain and improve a system that ensures that our input comes from responsibly managed forests and legal harvest sites. We screen our supply chain to exclude wood from National Parks and virgin forests and, as a next step in terms of biodiversity protection, we are looking into setting up additional screening measures when it comes to old growth forests (even though we do not process large diameter logs).
By supporting the Tomorrow’s Forest Foundation (www.padureademaine.ro), we also engage in extensive reforestation projects supporting local communities
8.1. Contribution to economic development
HS Timber Group’s presence in Romania alone generated total gross wages of 35.4 million Euro in 2019 – through payments and social security contribution to our direct employees.
In 2019, HS Timber Group also contributed 20 million Euro for Corporate Income Tax, Social Contributions and Employees’ Income Tax, through directly paid taxes, as well as indirect and induced taxes. Since 2003, the total contribution amounts to 248 million Euro.
HS Timber Group continuously invests in its Romania assets. The Group invested in Romania more than four million Euro in 2019. Since its entry on the Romanian market in 2002, the company’s total capital expenditure has exceeded 800 million Euro.
8.2. Commitment to society
Corporate social responsibility at HS Timber Group means looking first at what we can improve internally, so as not to waste any wood, add the most value to it, reduce our environmental footprint and act as a responsible employer, thereby creating safe and meaningful jobs. With the help of our stakeholders, we implement a continuous process to improve our procedures, i.e., the way we do things to make sure the wood we process is legal and harvested from sustainably-managed forests.
In doing so, we strive to be an industry leader, driving systemic change in wood traceability, for instance. We are aware of the social and economic realities in the communities around our sawmills and panels factories and sponsor a variety of projects to improve their access to adequate social, education and health care services. From 2010 to 2019, HS Timber provided sponsorship in Romania to the tune of approximately 6.78 million Euro.
Our areas of CSR intervention are social, environmental and forward-looking.
Social
We support projects and initiatives that improve community services in the communities and regions in which we operate – in kindergartens, schools, housing for disadvantaged people, facilities for the poor and elderly, emergency services, public buildings, as well as community events.
Environmental
We support and develop projects and initiatives that contribute to sustainable forest management (including forest certification), wood traceability, reforestation and protection of biodiversity-rich areas.
Forward-looking
We support education, research, development and innovation in forestry and the wood industry by means of scholarships (at universities and technical colleges), endowment of laboratories, projects and events.
8.3. CSR highlights
HS Timber Group’s CSR contributions in 2019 were on the level of approximately 560,000 Euro. Some details on our programme’s highlights are provided below.
8.3.1. Scholarships for forestry and wood engineering students
Since 2015, HS Timber Group’s scholarship programme has provided financial aid to forestry and wood engineering students, to encourage the development of future experts in the timber industry.
The company is a partner of several Romanian educational institutions and, in the 2018–2019 academic year, granted 20 scholarships to students from faculties in three universities: Brașov, Suceava and Cluj-Napoca. The total value of each scholarship was 8,000 lei for the entire academic year. The winners of the scholarships are selected following a competition that includes a theoretical exam and a practical test.
HS Timber Group has also been supporting a vocational class at the Grigore Cobălcescu Technical College in Moineşti, Bacău county, since the 2016/2017 school year. In this class, 14 students were trained to be locksmiths and other 14 students were trained to be electricians. Students received a monthly grant from the company and also had the opportunity to carry out paid internships at HS Timber Group’s Romanian factories. In addition, we have sponsored state-of-the-art laboratory equipment at the college and the renovation of its facilities.
8.3.2. Funding of the Maria Ward Social Centre in Rădăuți
Children of disadvantaged families often do not have access to education, yet this is an important basis for social advancement. The Maria Ward Social Centre in Rădăuți, in the historical region of Bukovina in north-east Romania, addresses this issue.
The centre, which belongs to NGO I.S.E.A. (Asociația Informare, Suport, Educație și Ajutor) and is run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, accommodates around 50 children. The children can take part in creative and social activities and receive psychological support, speech therapy and homework assistance, but also regular meals and hygiene education. Employment advice and other services are provided to their parents. The Maria Ward Centre has been in operation since 1994. However, the facilities were no longer adequate, so the building was rebuilt and modernised in autumn 2014 with funding from HS Timber Group. The centre regularly receives support from HS Timber Group for various improvements and initiatives.
8.3.3. The afterschool programme in Reci
Since 2013, HS Timber Group has funded an after-school programme for children in Reci. Around 50 children from socially disadvantaged families receive homework assistance at the facility, a hot meal and leisure time activities, under the supervision of trained professionals.
The afterschool programme is housed in a historic building, next to the school, that was renovated by HS Timber Group in 2013 with the support of the local community. HS Timber Group co-finances the cost of the meals and salaries for staff.
8.3.4. The 2019 Evergreen Innovation Camp Hackathon
The Evergreen Innovation Camp (EIC) is an initiative of the Evergreen Foundation, which is the owner of HS Timber Group, set out to let multidisciplinary students and alumni work together on a real-life challenge.
The 2019 Innovation Camp took place at the BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, as part of an international hackathon. This hackathon is a 48-hour, collaborative event, in which interdisciplinary teams focus on the challenge of tracing timber from its harvesting point in the forest through to its arrival at the sawmill. The hackathon is also a celebration of team spirit, creative exchange and pleasure in tackling the task at hand.
At the first Evergreen Innovation Camp Hackathon, 75 students and young professionals from a total of 18 universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland teamed up for 48 hours to find innovative, financially-viable solutions for tracing timber. The ability to seamlessly and transparently trace each individual log is becoming increasingly important for our industry. For that reason, the Evergreen Innovation Camp is designed to come up with specific, creative solutions which guarantee traceability along the supply chain.
All 12 teams, supported by experienced mentors, developed innovative solutions, concepts and prototypes based partly on blockchain and artificial intelligence. At the end of the two-day event, each team had the chance to convince the high-profile jury of the value of their idea.
The winning team, “Tree ID”, developed a concept based on comparing laser measurement data from the forest and at the sawmill. Before being harvested, the standing trees are measured using a mobile laser scanning device. The stem contour and the branch distribution along the stem surface are computed into a unique profile and can be matched with 3D-contour scanning of the logs in the mill.
The Evergreen Innovation Camp is planned as an annual event, focusing on a different topic each time. But it will always be concerned with generating and embracing innovations in forestry and the timber industry.
More information on the Evergreen Innovation Camp at: www.evergreen-innovationcamp.io
8.3.5. Tomorrow’s Forest
The Tomorrow’s Forest reforestation project7 is an initiative of the Romanian Association of Forest Administrators (Asociația Administratorilor de Păduri, AAP) together with the Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava (Faculty of Forestry) and HS Timber Group. This project was initiated in September 2017, after many stakeholders have expressed the need for such activities.
The initiative aims to plant one million trees in private and community-owned forest areas by 2024. This takes place primarily in areas which, owing to poor management, were affected by soil erosion and a lack of natural regeneration. Conservation and monitoring of reforested lands continues for five to seven years, to ensure that the next generation of forests grows well. Tomorrow’s Forest supports private owners and local communities that lack the necessary funds for appropriate reforestation, in accordance with legal obligations. Applications are evaluated based on defined criteria and using a scorecard. Planting is carried out according to the natural tree species composition and is documented in detail. In addition to containing key information on the project, the methodology and the reforestation areas, the project website also has a section for potential beneficiaries and volunteers.
Forest regeneration usually takes place naturally, without the need for external interventions. When this is not possible, the land owner has the legal responsibility to plant the new forest. Sometimes, forest owners cannot afford the planting works, e.g. because they haven’t harvested any wood, they were restituted areas with regeneration difficulties, their areas were affected by calamities and regeneration works were unsuccessful, etc. Tomorrow’s Forest answers this need, to help private owners and local administrations regenerate their forests. The project will be implemented between 2017 and 2027 (five years of planting and at least three years of maintenance works for each area), at a rate of approximately 200,000 seedlings planted per year (not counting the replacement seedlings).
7 www.padureademaine.ro/en/
By the end of 2019, 88.5 hectares have been reforested, with a total of 368,000 seedlings of different tree species, in coordination with the relevant forest administration. More than 400,000 Euro was committed for the regeneration of these areas, an average of 5,000 Euro per hectare (including the necessary follow-up costs for the next five to seven years). HS Timber Group has pledged over 1.3 million Euro for the period 2017 to 2027, which will enable a total of one million trees to be planted.
HS Timber Group and the Tomorrow’s Forest Foundation concluded a strategic partnership in order to jointly work on the implementation of environmental and social projects promoting responsible development of Romanian forests and benefiting forest-based communities in Romania. The Tomorrow’s Forest Foundation was set up in 2019 with the strategic help of HS Timber Group. The Foundation’s mission is to contribute to the protection and the responsible management of forests and the development of a sustainable forest economy in Romania. HS Timber Group seeks with this strategic partnership to get a more targeted and better implementation of the company’s CSR engagement. For more information, visit www.padureademaine.ro/en/
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