CESEFOR is a private non-profit Foundation founded in Castile and León (Spain) in January 2003. It’s a services provider for the promotion of forestry and forest-based industries with a national and international remit. The Foundation contributes to the regional development, competitiveness and sustainability of the forestry industries that use regional forest resources. In order to do this, Cesefor brings together a range of services: capacity building, consultancy and training.
Cesefor has an extensive experience in the development of R&D&I projects, especially focused on the development of new wood products and the improvement of their manufacturing processes, in the construction sector. For this, a large workshop (carpentry) and a specific laboratory for the development of wood prototypes and their subsequent evaluation is available in the Cesefor’s main facility, in Soria. Among the equipment to highlight, a large testing gantry for the evaluation of mechanical properties, a test bench for bending, compression and shear tests with a capacity of up to 50 tons, universal testing machine, testing machine for electrical laying posts, conditioning chamber, window test bench, mechanical evaluation equipment based on Non Destructive Methods (Brookhuis, Fakopp, resistor, among others), structural calculation software (Drubal), Life Cycle Analysis software, and so on.
We also have a large forest certification department that offers services to companies in the sector: PEFC, FSC, CE Marking (through harmonized standards or DAEs and ATEs), DAPs, Carbon Footprints, etc.
Another Cesefor’s interesting working line for the project is focused on IT developments for the forestry sector: web and software development, GIS analysis and applications, mobile devices solutions for geographical projects, and high-tech solutions for forestry products evaluation, such as the Lidar application for forestry inventories (GIS- and WebGIS-based products for NRM: wood, biomass, CO2, non-timber products; Protected area management; Mobile device’s software for forestry and environmental field duty; Documentation, database development and other knowledge-management applications for the forest-based sector).
CESEFOR is present in several EU Networks and also highly experienced in communication & dissemination: graphic design, web page development and management, social media, event planning and organization, newsletters and media work. CESEFOR publishes “IndForma”: a leading e-newsletter of the Spanish forest sector. CESEFOR is an official member of the European Forest Institute; hosts the Secretariat of the Mediterranean Model Forest Network since 2008; it is member of the IUFRO Network and part of the Steering Committee of the ERIAFF Network and of the FAO SilvaMed’s Collaborative Partnership for the Mediterranean Forest.
