A Long-Term Follow-Up Study of Slash Bundling in Fast-Growing Eucalypt Plantations

Abstract

The Authors conducted a long-term follow-up study of a John Deere 1490 forwarder-mounted bundler owned by a Portuguese company and used for bundling logging residues from fast-growing eucalypt plantations located in Portugal and Spain. The study spanned 7 years, from 2011 to 2016. During this time, the machine clocked over 11,500 h and produced more than 200,000 bundles or 75,000 green tons of biomass. Bundle length was commonly 2.4 m, and bundle mass averaged 350 kg. Overall, the database contained 1752 daily records. Bundling productivity averaged 19 bundles per productive machine hour (meter hour, excluding all major delays). Mechanical availability was very high and averaged 93%. Utilization commonly ranged between 65% and 75%. Use and productivity showed a predictable seasonal trend and a slight decline over time. The latter might be due to wear, but also due to the increasingly challenging conditions faced by the company as the average worksite size sharply decreased from 2011 onwards. While almost extinct elsewhere, bundling seems to thrive in the Iberian plantations, possibly due to the industrial character of both eucalypt farming and bioenergy generation in the region. That allows the reaping of all integration benefits offered by bundling, while the cost of setting up a parallel biomass chain is minimized. Furthermore, bundling seems the ideal technique for efficient residue recovery where slash yields are low and roadside storage space is limited: these are the typical constraints of industrial eucalypt plantations, where planted area is maximized (=little landing space) and the largest possible proportion of the tree mass is turned into pulpwood (=relatively low residue yield).

Logging residue chipping options for short rotation poplar plantations

“…In order to maximize payload, trucks would be loaded on site by an independent loader, which could be relocated some time in advance for concentrating the bundles into larger piles to speed up truck loading later on. In fact, it seems that forwarder-mounted bundlers might find their competitive niche when the residue load is low (Spinelli et al 2021), which is exactly why terrain chipping might be at a disadvantage in short-rotation poplar plantations.…”

“…These were: 75 € per scheduled machine hour (SMH) for the heavy forwarder; 300 € SMH -1 for the chipper truck when engaged with work and 150 € SMH -1 for the same machine in the idle state (downtime); and 60 € SMH -1 for each of the two road rigs. The rates charged by the service providers selected for the study were in line with those charged by other service providers in the region, so that the rates and costs may be considered representative of the study region (Spinelli et al 2021).…”