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Forestry Investment News
Funding of £1 million to track timber shipments
07/04/2010
Helveta, a firm based in Oxford, has announced that it will now accelerate the development of software technology to track illegal timber shipments, following a £1 million funding deal with Carbon Trust Investments, Oxford Capital Partners, Albion Venture and Success Europe.
The investment in the new software is designed to help in the battle against illegal logging. With the new technology, companies will be able to verify the provenance of the timber they are purchasing, even with a complex supply chain.
The software employs a combination of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, satellite technology, barcodes and asset tracking to check that timber has not come from illegal plantations. In this way, it will help in tackling deforestation, which is seen as being responsible for approximately 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.
Peter Linthwaite, managing partner for Carbon Trust Investment Partners, explained that the introduction of new forestry rules due to carbon emission issues means that there is a growing market for Helveta's technology. The software has already been utilised in Ghana, Liberia, South Africa and Bolivia and the Helveta’s chief executive, Patrick Newton, says that they are now looking to expand into new markets in central Africa.
The investment in the new software is designed to help in the battle against illegal logging. With the new technology, companies will be able to verify the provenance of the timber they are purchasing, even with a complex supply chain.
The software employs a combination of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, satellite technology, barcodes and asset tracking to check that timber has not come from illegal plantations. In this way, it will help in tackling deforestation, which is seen as being responsible for approximately 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.
Peter Linthwaite, managing partner for Carbon Trust Investment Partners, explained that the introduction of new forestry rules due to carbon emission issues means that there is a growing market for Helveta's technology. The software has already been utilised in Ghana, Liberia, South Africa and Bolivia and the Helveta’s chief executive, Patrick Newton, says that they are now looking to expand into new markets in central Africa.
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