Tallinn-based forestry tech Timbeter, which is digitalising and bringing transparency to the forestry sector, has kicked off a project with the government of Costa Rica. The aims of the project are to support the digitization of forest management in the region, and increase competitiveness of the local forestry sector.
Timbeter, founded in 2013, is a global industrial timber measurement, logistics and reporting platform. Timbeter’s precision forestry platform eliminates manual counting, measuring and tracking of timber assets, cutting measurement and documentation times by 10 and increasing accuracy by 5 times. Via the world’s largest database of photometric measurements of roundwood, it can track timber assets in real time, down to individual shipments and piles throughout the forestry value chain.
Timbeter is already working with state forests in Poland and the Netherlands, and other countries of the world, and its clients include some of the largest companies in the sector such as CMPC (Chile), International Paper (Brazil), Faber-Castell (Brazil), Siam Forestry Group (Thailand), Mekong Timber Plantations (Laos), Port Blakely (US), SEQH (Australia) and many others. Now, it’s time to bring its technology to Costa Rica.
The Estonian Environmental Investment Centre (or ‘KIK’ in Estonian) is funding this new project. It aims to integrate their technology with the digital solutions developed by the government of the Central American nation to oversee the forestry sector, facilitate sustainable forest management, and fight illegal logging in the country.
Costa Rica is known for its efforts regarding sustainable natural resource management and as a green pioneer in a region of the world that is highly vulnerable to climate change. The government of Costa Rica, through their Ministry of Environment and Energy, will explore opportunities to integrate Timbeter’s artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud technology to support their efforts and investments in monitoring and controlling the local forestry sector. Costa Rica’s Vice Minister of the Environment and Energy, Pamela Castillo, has also commented that this project has come at an opportune time, as Costa Rica plans to reactivate its economy after the pandemic, specifically by promoting goods and services that are nature-based.
Anna-Greta Tsahkna, CEO of Timbeter, commented: “The timber industry has an important role in providing renewable material and fighting illegal logging. We need to make sure that forests are managed sustainably. Digital solutions like Timbeter help companies to be more efficient and transparent and also easily provide needed data for the government that will help to fight the illegal logging. And now, we are happy that we can work together with the Costa Rica government and the forestry private sector in the country”.
Rafael Monge Vargas, Director of the National Centre of Geo-Environmental Information and local counterpart of the project in Costa Rica, highlighted that “with this cooperation we aim to strengthen the Costa Rican Forest Resources Information System (SIREFOR), through the incorporation of state of the art digital tools, that facilitate the work carried out by the Costa Rican authorities for the control and monitoring of forest harvesting activities”.
