Reader’s letter This is a debate entry, written by an external contributor. The post expresses the writer’s views.
Before Easter, LO and the timber industry invited us county politicians to an information and dialogue meeting on the topic. This was useful, informative and constructive. Here we have to play as a team.
As a follow-up to this, I tabled a question in the county council on 24 April about the need for a new timber terminal. Today’s timber terminal at Lierstranda needs a new location when the lease expires in 2028. It is therefore urgent to get the process back on track.
The timber terminal currently receives timber from 70 municipalities, and on average more than 300,000m2 of timber has passed through the port every year since 2014. This makes the terminal one of the country’s largest and most important. The terminal is therefore very important for a large industry that employs many people. Timber prices are currently the highest since the end of the 90s, and the forestry industry is undoubtedly an industry of the future and an important part of the green shift and conversion from black to green carbon.
The timber industry has been clear that localization is absolutely crucial for competitiveness. The main requirement is the shortest possible distance from the largest possible timber resources. Each extra mile on a logging truck costs NOK 12–15 per approx. Analyzes clearly point to the fact that it is therefore in the inner parts of the Drammensfjord that a terminal must be located. Everything else leads to increased transport costs and reduced competitiveness.
In the period 2015–2019, Buskerud County Municipality started work on a regional plan to find a new location for the timber terminal, but due to regional reform, the plan was not adopted because the recommended proposal Juve in Svelvik was located in Vestfold county. The case was therefore forwarded to Viken County Council with a request decision to follow up on the case. In a letter from the Ministry of Trade and Industry to Viken county municipality in June 2023, we can read that the ministry asks the new Buskerud county municipality to again try to land this through a regional planning process.
Several actors have pointed to Juve in Svelvik as wanting localization, but there is great local resistance to this in the old Svelvik municipality and Drammen municipality, due to the increased load there
will involve activity and traffic in the area. This is understandable. Therefore, a new process must look at several options.
The answer from the county mayor to my interpellation was that administrative work is now underway between Buskerud county municipality, Lier municipality and Drammen municipality, and that we will eventually get a case for political consideration. That is good, and it gives me hope that we can now have a process that leads to this being settled once and for all.
