Stenvalls Trä: 'We wouldn't have managed to do the business we 're doing today without this solution'

APM Terminals Gothenburg spoke to Roger Bergman, Marketing Manager at Stenvalls Trä AB. A year ago, Norrland-based Stenvalls Trä AB took the step of ending its traditional logistics solution to jump in with APM Terminals Gothenburg.

Tell us a about Stenvalls Trä!

Stenvalls Trä is a privately owned parent company with its core business being the processing of sawn timber. We now have everything from DIY stores to helicopter companies to IT companies within the Group. Sales have increased sharply, and at a rapid pace, and we now have a turnover of more than 2 billion SEK. One clear success factor is that we work with a long term vision and grow with our customers, which means that we've been able to plan our logistics flows. Increased volume has resulted in increased interest from international markets, such as Asia.

A year ago, the first train from APM Terminals in Gothenburg set off to Piteå, and you were the first to go with this new solution. What made you take that step?

April 2020 saw large parts of the world shutting down and a lot of people started working from home. As a result, demand for wood products increased all over the world, as a lot of people wanted to build new homes and renovate existing ones. Naturally, this was a benefit to our business. At the same time, we had concerns about container access from Piteå Port, since no one wanted to ship empty containers to Northern Sweden. The offering available in the north was no longer suitable for our large volumes.

To solve this pressing situation, we drove a lot of trucks to the Port of Gothenburg and other ports in Sweden. This was until we took the decision to start using a train shuttle to APM Terminals in Gothenburg in collaboration with First Row Shipping.

What was it like to leave a traditional logistics solution for something completely new?

Of course, it was a bit nerve-wracking and if the offer had come a couple of years earlier, we might not have done it. But now we were in real need of a working solution and we were easily able to fill a train just by ourselves. When we also realised that the shuttle saved 87 per cent of our climate emissions, that was it. Looking back, this has been an incredibly successful solution, which will stay strong into the future.

Now the shuttle is up to three departures per week and another shuttle has started from Umeå to Gothenburg. What does this mean for you and for industry in Northern Sweden generally?

We wouldn't have managed to do the business we 're doing today without this solution. Other companies have seen how well it's working and have chosen to join in, even ones with smaller volumes. This has led to more departures a week and thereby greater flexibility. We 'recurrently fill around 50 per cent of the trains, the rest is allocated to other industries and our industry colleagues.

The industry in the north is very much sustainability-oriented. Among other things, there's the battery factory and the entire forestry industry with paper mills and sawmills. This solution is helping a lot of companies to achieve their ambitious climate goals.

Finally, what tip do you want to give other exporters in Northern Sweden?

As exporters, we should choose whichever terminal in Sweden gives us the best conditions for container freight, and currently that's APM Terminals in the Port of Gothenburg. For us in the north, it’s just a matter of getting the goods there as sustainably and profitably as possible.