Spinelli R., Magagnotti N., Picchi G. 1/6 FORMEC 2010 Forest Engineering: Meeting the Needs of the Society and the Environment July 11 – 14, 2010, Padova – Italy A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF HARVESTERS AND PROCESSORS IN ITALY: WHAT, WHERE, HOW Raffaele Spinelli, Natascia Magagnotti, Gianni Picchi CNR IVALSA Via Biasi 75 San Michele all’Adige (TN), Italy e-mail: spinelli@valsa.cnr.it Keywords: harvester, processor, utilization, cost, fleet Abstract: The Authors conducted a comprehensive survey of mechanized harvesting and processing machinery in Italy, with the purpose of understanding if the close-to-nature small-scale forestry typical of this country may prevent a reasonably intense utilization of modern technology, or entail a significant increase of its operating cost. Despite the challenging work conditions offered by Italian forestry, modern forest technology has already made significant inroads, as witnessed by a small yet substantial harvester and processor fleet, counting about 90 units, 75 % of which mounted on general-purpose carriers. Utilization levels are lower than those reported for northern and central Europe, but still in excess of 1000 hours year -1 , at least for the prime movers. Insurance, repair and maintenance costs are significantly lower than generally reported in current literature. However, empirical data on machine costs is very scarce, and most studies report estimates rather than measured values. Such estimates are often obtained with the same basic methods derived from agriculture, thus raising the question of whether their adaptation to forestry use should be further refined. 1. Introduction The prevalence of non industrial private forestry (NIPF) and the very limited success of owners’ associations may hinder the introduction of mechanized harvesting to Italian forestry. In fact, the small scale of most Italian logging firms is likely to reflect their dependence on NIPF sources, and results in a limited investment capacity. Nevertheless, mechanized CTL technology has made significant inroads into Italian forestry, and it is increasingly frequent to encounter logging firms that have just purchased their second machine. Therefore, it may be interesting to characterize the Italian harvester and processor fleet, by describing its composition, development and utilization patterns: this may provide a very useful example of how Nordic technology can be introduced to a very different economic, social and physical environment, indicating what are the main opportunities, obstacles and success factors. Besides, it may be very useful to determine how the local economic, social and physical conditions of Southern European NIPF can affect the utilization and the cost of mechanized harvesting technology. In this respect, Italy represents an ideal case study, due to the prevalence of NIPF and to the existence of a sizable machine fleet. Both the Italian machine users and the foreign producers have much interest in understanding if such conditions may affect the composition of the Italian machine fleet, and cause significant deviations from the mainstream European trends. Similarly, both may want to know if the close-to-nature small- scale forestry typical of this country prevents a reasonably intense utilization of CTL technology, or entails a significant increase of operating cost through the excessive incidence of machine relocation expenses. Therefore, the goals of this study were: A) to characterize the Italian harvester and processor fleet, describing its usage pattern and its development over the past 10 years; B) to determine the annual utilization level of mechanized CTL technology in Italy, and to compare it with the utilization levels commonly reported for other European countries; C) to determine the cost sustained by the Italian logger for the insurance, relocation, repair and maintenance of their harvesters and processors.