Maskinell plantering – analys av planteringsmaskinen PlantmaX potential inom privatskogsbruket

Non-industrial private forest owners (NIPFs) own more than half of Sweden's productive forestland. Unfortunately, Swedish private forest owner’s interest in tree planting is generally declining. Since autumn 2019, the PlantmaX tree planting machine has been operational. However, it was developed mainly for Sweden’s large-scale forestry. The mechanization of silviculture is expected to lead to cost savings for the forestry industry in the long run; thus, it is important that private forest owners also catch on to that mechanization trend. The objective of this analysis is to evaluate PlantmaX's suitability for Swedish NIPFs. The analysis was made using input data from a number of sources, both written and personal communications, from the autumn of 2020-2021. A field study of PlantmaX’s planting quality showed that the tree planting machine currently plants seedlings with poorer quality than manual tree planting. Nevertheless, it is judged that this difference in planting quality is probably not decisive for Swedish NIPF’s acceptance of the PlantmaX concept. However, PlantmaX currently seems to be most suitable for planting pine because of the machine's difficulty in planting on inverted turf/humus in a high-quality way. It is estimated that 4 ha seems to be the smallest tract/clearcut size for the PlantmaX concept to be competitive. However, as the average tract/clearcut size on NIPF forestland is lower than 4 ha in both Svealand and Götaland, coordination of tracts/clearcuts could be a promising tactic to counteract the higher planting costs that small tracts/clearcuts entail. The final assessment is that there is great potential to increase PlantmaX’s planting quality, especially when incorporating more sensors and automatic identification of planting spots. Therefore, PlantmaX's future planting quality will probably increase, which will further strengthen the PlantmaX concept's suitability for Swedish NIPFs.