Lit­hua­nia is not a par­ticu­larly large fore­stry country. Only about 6–7 mil­lion cubic met­res of wood are har­ves­ted each year. There are also no pulp mills in the country, so its fibre wood is expor­ted. On the other hand, the domes­tic saw­mill industry is strong, and small wood is used a lot in the pro­duc­tion of bio­energy.

“We have four PONSSE Ergo har­ves­ters, four PONSSE Bison forwar­ders and one PONSSE Buf­falo forwar­der. We ope­rate our fleet in such a way that one dri­ver works for seven con­secu­tive days and ten hours a day. He then has a week off, during which the mac­hine is ope­ra­ted by anot­her dri­ver. In this way, we can har­vest around 150,000 cubic met­res a year,” says Min­dau­gas Lukas toget­her with Reni­gi­jus Lukas, Remi­gi­jus Zda­na­vicius and Algis Zulpa from the com­pany UAB Geri­lita.

In addi­tion to forest mac­hi­nes, the com­pany has 20 Volvo trucks, one of which is used to trans­port forest mac­hi­nes and nine­teen to trans­port tim­ber. The com­pany ope­ra­tes in nort­hern and wes­tern Lit­hua­nia wit­hin a radius of approxi­ma­tely 150 to 200 kilo­met­res from the Bal­tic Sea to the Lat­vian bor­der.

“In Lit­hua­nia, local trans­port dis­tances for wood are typically quite long, usually more than a kilo­metre. The­re­fore, for the sake of efficiency, we use mode­ra­tely large Ponsse Buf­fa­los and one Ponsse Bison for our forwar­ders. In addi­tion, nowa­days the ground is often only frozen for 6 to 8 weeks a year in win­ter­time, so the mac­hi­nes must not be too heavy, since the ground is soft when it thaws,” the men say.

Wood deli­ve­red to the saw­mill and har­bour

About half of Lit­hua­nia’s forests are state-owned and half pri­va­tely owned. The Geri­lita com­pany has its own forests, but it also har­vests wood in state forests and other pri­vate forests.

“The pulpwood is often dri­ven to the port and expor­ted to Swe­den, for example, to Stora Enso. Sawn tim­ber goes to Lit­hua­nian saw­mills. Seve­ral local power plants use wood chips as a source of bio­energy. We do quite little thin­ning.”

More forest

Brot­hers Min­dau­gas and Reni­gi­jus Lukas foun­ded the Geri­lita com­pany in 2010. Both have deca­des of expe­rience in the forest sec­tor. At first, the com­pany only trans­por­ted wood using trucks. It purc­ha­sed its first own forest mac­hi­nes in 2020.

“The choice of forest mac­hine was clear. Ponsse is the best mac­hine, and Bal­tic Agro has the best main­te­nance and other ser­vices,” the brot­hers state.

Their first mac­hine has now been dri­ven for 15,500 hours in 4.5 years. The aim is to replace the mac­hi­nes once they have been dri­ven for 20,000 hours. For their next har­ves­ters, they want the new H7 har­ves­ter head that is being pre­sen­ted at the Finn­METKO 2024 trade fair with such advanced fea­tu­res as efficient Active Speed ​​and even bet­ter geo­metry for large and croo­ked trees.

“We have no inten­tion to inc­rease the ove­rall num­ber of mac­hi­nes in our fleet, at least in the next few years, but we do plan to acquire more of our own forests for the com­pany,” says Min­dau­gas Lukas.

Acclai­med dea­ler and impor­ter

The team at Geri­lita unre­ser­vedly praise the UAB Bal­tic Agro Mac­hi­nery com­pany that repre­sents Ponsse in Lit­hua­nia. Com­pa­nies belon­ging to the same group also handle Ponsse sales and ser­vice in Lat­via and Esto­nia.

“We have our head office in Vil­nius plus four sales and ser­vice points in dif­fe­rent parts of Lit­hua­nia. Since Lit­hua­nia is a fairly small country, we cover the entire area so that the cus­to­mer has a maxi­mum of 120 kilo­met­res to our nea­rest loca­tion – usually much shor­ter even,” says Giedrius Cicé­nas, Depart­ment Mana­ger at Bal­tic Agro Mac­hi­nery.

Bal­tic Agro Mac­hi­nery belongs to the Danish group Danish Agro. In addi­tion to Ponsse forest mac­hi­nes, the com­pany repre­sents Kobelco and Kubota earth­mo­ving mac­hi­nes and Claas agricul­tu­ral mac­hi­nes in Lit­hua­nia.

“Pons­se’s mar­ket share in Lit­hua­nia is around 30 percent. All wood is har­ves­ted using the cut-to-length met­hod. A few years and a decade ago, a lot of wood was har­ves­ted by hand by lum­ber­jacks, but nowa­days all fel­ling is done by mac­hine,” says Cicé­nas.