2007

The Most Modern Sorting and Packing Line for Forest Saplings in the Baltic States Has Been Opened at the Mazsili Nursery

On 1 November a new sapling sorting and packing line started operating at the Mazsili nursery of the AS Latvijas Valsts Meži (LVM) structural unit LVM Sēklas un Stādi. This is the most modern sorting and packing line for forest plants in the Baltic States.

Shortly prior to the formal opening of the forest plant sorting and packing line, the LVM Chairman of the Board Roberts Strīpnieks emphasized that with putting the line into operation another huge step in the Company’s development has been achieved, which will allow LVM to provide its clients with even more qualitative services further on and will be a significant contribution into qualitative forest renovation in Latvia. “I am very much pleased and honoured that we are at the most modern nursery in the Baltic States. And I am even more pleased that the other two most modern nurseries in the Baltics are also located in Latvia – these are the LVM Strenči and Podiņi nurseries,” said Roberts Strīpnieks.

Director of the LVM structural unit LVM Sēklas un Stādi Guntis Grandāns expressed satisfaction that putting the new forest plant sorting and packing line into operation will considerably increase the productivity of the LVM nurseries, and namely, labour efficiency will grow by 25 percent. He informed that the sapling sorting and packing line will be operated by 15 to 18 workers and productivity of one such line will be 200,000 pine or fir plants a day.

Since this autumn, already three new sapling sorting and packing semiautomatic lines have been installed and have started operating at the LVM structural unit LVM Sēklas un Stādi – the Mazsili, Strenči and Podiņi nurseries. The plant sorting and packing lines have been developed in cooperation with the Swedish plant production technological constructions company BCC AB especially for LVM needs, by observing the plant raising technology elaborated by LVM Sēklas un Stādi in Latvia, and are the first forest plant packing lines of such type in the Baltic States. “Our company has representative offices in 16 states; however, we have not seen such fast development as in Latvia anywhere else,” said Sales Manager of the forest plant sorting and packing line manufacturer BCC AB Andreas Berner at the formal opening.

Participants of the formal opening of the Mazsili nursery sapling sorting and packing line had an opportunity of getting acquainted not only with the operation of this line but also to observe the complete cycle of raising plants – sowing and raising plants at huge greenhouses and polygons, gathering plants from the field, as well as to see the forest plant cold storage, where even in summer the air temperature does not go above minus four degrees.

The LVM structural unit LVM Sēklas un Stādi is the largest forest plant manufacturer in Latvia, hereto, a part of its high quality forest plants are exported to Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania. If in 2001 LVM raised 11.5 million forest plants, then in 2007 the amount of plants raised by LVM Sēklas un Stādi will already reach 32.7 million.