Wooden mother of invention

It was a magnificent event once again. 600 guests had followed the invitation of Gerald Schweighofer to the Sixth Award of the Schweighofer Prize in the Vienna City Hall on 4 June. Grand Prize winners this time was Dott. Ing. Federico Giudiceandrea. When he was a young electrical engineer, he brought methods of electronic image processing into the sawmill. There, it resulted in a significant increase in yield and quality over the years. Thus his company, Microtec, Bressanone/IT, grew to become the technology leader in this segment, jury chairman Prof. Dr. Alfred Teischinger pointed out in his laudatory speech. The determination to unveil the last secrets of wood led to the development of a computer tomography for roundwood. The CT.Log unit recognizes at the untouched logs where annual rings, knots, resin pockets or cracks are. This opens up completely new opportunities for optimization and is particularly important in times of scarce and expensive resources.
In his emotional speech, the newly crowned grand winner thanked his staff, Springer Maschinenfabrik (which holds 70% of Microtec), and with a heartfelt "Grazie, grazie, Stefania" he also thanked his wife. For it was she who gave him the freedom to achieve his astounding innovations, he concluded. The benefits of Giudiceandrea and Microtec are widely recognized. In 2012, the company had been awarded the title Timber-online's Company of the Year the second time over.

All innovation awards went to timber construction

Two Austrian ministers were present at the ceremony: Minister of Labour Rudolf Hundstorfer and Minister of Environment Nikolaus Berlakovich. In his speech, Berlakovich committed himself to the principle of a cascading use of wood which puts forth the material wood use at the beginning and the thermal use only at the end of its lifecycle.
This principle has been implemented by all of the four innovation award winners in an exemplary manner. All projects focused on timber construction, even if with very different approaches. The judges had no easy task. There were 71 entries for the Innovation Award – a record in the Prize's history.
Stefan Krestel, Ulrich Spiegel and Gernot Kulmer were the first to be called on the stage. They received their certificates and a prize money of € 50,000 for the development and market preparation of the keel-fin lightweight panel.
Another accolade went to the Hochschule RheinMain, University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden/DE. There, a team headed by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Leander Bathon developed a powerful new connection technology with perforated, glued-in metal sheets.
Being also a Timber-online Company of the Year 2012, Cree received the Innovation Award #3: Through this company from Bregenz/AT, contractor Hubert Rhomberg and architecture professor Hermann Kaufmann distribute their lifecycle tower system for multi-storey wood hybrid constructions. Its systematic approach and intelligent, but non-dogmatic use of wood were hailed by a number of speakers.
The fourth innovation prize the jury awarded to the "Wooden Nordic Cities"-concept. The aim of this collaboration platform is to catalyse timber construction in north European communities.

A unique event Worldwide

That a timber industrialist devotes a portion of his assets to wood research without asking anything in return, is remarkable: Gerald Schweighofer. But far beyond that, the ceremony itself is also valuable. This year, the event provided a platform for senior managers, entrepreneurs and industry representatives from 35 countries to meet in a relaxed atmosphere. Among them were about Måns Johansson, the new president of the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry (EOS), or numerous previous winners – for example Hans Hundegger, who first got the trophy for his achievements in the field of CNC-based joinery in 2003. "The setting of the event is absolutely unique", empasized a Canadian businessman who had travelled to Vienna just for attending the award ceremony.
Looking back on ten years of Schweighofer Prize Awards, the initiator can rightfully be upbeat. "Research is key to the future", Schweighofer said in his speech. "The fact that with 71 we have had a record number of entries this year just proves how many great ideas and how much potential there still is in the timber industry."