INNOVATION PROFILE/Coillte/Vodafone:MANY ORGANISATIONS boast about their innovative cultures but few have put in place structured innovation processes in the way that Coillte has.
Best known for its role as the state forestry company, Coillte has established innovation boards in each of its four divisions to gather new ideas and put the best ones into action.
“We are now in our second year of having a formal process to encourage and foster innovation throughout the company,” says group director of innovation Ciaran Black.
“Each division now has its own innovation board and we have established a simple online system for staff to input their ideas. We try to encourage the generation of as many ideas by individuals, teams and groups. We take these ideas and select the best ones using a fairly informal and loose process and progress them onwards.”
He believes this proactive stance sets Coillte apart from many other companies.
“We don’t just wait for ideas – we go out and look for them. If you look at most companies, innovation is always happening in them but we have formalised it and made out a structure on it. We have set targets for our innovation boards and we have also set targets for revenue we want to achieve from products and services which didn’t exist before now.”
This may not sound particularly impressive if you think of Coillte as purely a forestry company but it is far more than that as head of corporate communications Tom Byrne explains.
“Coillte is a commercial semi-state company and our mission is to pursue the full commercial development of the company. Our core purpose is to enrich lives locally, nationally and globally through the innovative and sustainable management of natural resources.
“We used to be almost 100 per cent reliant on log sales to a variety of customers,” he adds. “But there are now four distinct strands to the company – panel products, forestry, land-based businesses, and renewable energy.”
The Coillte Panel Products (CPP) division consists of SmartPly Europe in Waterford which produces oriented strand board (OSB) and Medite Europe in Tipperary which produces medium density fibreboard (MDF).
“Medite is the market leader in its area and its brand has become a bit like Hoover and Biro in terms of its association with the product,” says Byrne. “It is mainly used for things like kitchens and building fit-outs and so on. OSB is more of a structural construction product and is used a lot in prefab buildings. Interestingly, it is now being used as a finished product as well as in a range of commercial applications.”
The forestry businesses include log sales, forestry services, plant sales and laboratory services.
In terms of land management, Coillte owns some 445,000 hectares – 7 per cent of the country’s land area.
“Land management encompasses everything we do as managers of the estate,” Byrne points out. “This can be planting trees or there are some areas which are not suitable for trees and we look for other things to do there. In other cases we might sell off some of the land for infrastructural development. Overall, we manage it in a commercial way. ”
Coillte is also a significant player in Ireland’s renewable energy sector.
“We are involved in wind energy and biomass,” says Byrne. “Almost 20 per cent of Ireland’s installed wind generating capacity is on Coillte land. But we can add more value for our shareholder, the taxpayer, by becoming part of the development process. We are directly involved in 10 separate wind energy projects in nine counties at the moment and we are looking at the optimal way to manage those projects. We have now added expertise in wind energy to the company.”
The company’s traditional skill sets are being brought to bear in the biomass area. “One of the challenges in biomass is getting the material to where it’s needed,” he notes. “Every year, 100,000 truckloads of logs move around Ireland as a result of Coillte activity. We have the logistical expertise to get the material in the right quantities when required by customers with the combined heat and power plants which are most suited to its use.”
He also points out that Coillte is responsible for 100 truckloads of timber and timber products being exported from Ireland every day.
Telecommunications is another strand which has been added to the company’s increasingly diverse portfolio of businesses. “We have an awful lot of sites around the country which are suitable for telecommunications masts and we have leased out a large number of them and we are now building our own masts. We were part of the Next Generation Broadband scheme and we have 100 masts in that. In total we have around 400 masts on our land. We are now looking at enabling some of these for 4G by connecting them with fibre to the backhaul networks required for that service.”
Innovation and modern telecommunications technology also plays a key role in how the company has been developing and improving its internal operations. “We partner with companies like Vodafone in utilising telecommunications to enhance our efficiency in terms of how we manage our activities,” says Black. “For example, we use tablet PCs out in the forest and our staff can connect back to the office over the 3G network. We collect a lot of data out in the forests and this is proving extremely helpful in that regard. The efficiency in terms of the amount of ground a forester can cover has improved greatly. They don’t have to go back to base any more to download their data, they can just move from one site to another collecting and recording data. Also, the data is instantly available to other people in the company who may not be able to access it on their tablets. The technology also enables our staff to move around easily and seamlessly across our 19 offices or anywhere out in the field.”
Safety has also been enhanced by the Vodafone technology. “Forestry can be a dangerous business,” Black points out. “We have introduced GPS-enabled working alone technology over the 3G network. Staff can use their hand-held devices not only to alert us if there is a problem but also to pinpoint their exact location. This could be critically important if someone gets injured.”
The technology also has a significant role to play in the wind energy business. Each wind turbine is fitted with its own mobile SIM card which enables communication with Eirgrid’s National Control Centre passing through data about wind speeds and power generated. This allows the NCC to maximise the potential of each site and look for alternative power sources for the grid should the turbine cease generating for any reason.
“We are also looking at other applications such as the development of mobile apps to deliver real-time location-based information to people making use of the various forest walks and trails we have around the country,” Black adds. “This is what makes innovation at Coillte so exciting; the scope is so wide and diverse. Our staff and our customers are benefiting from the advances we have made in terms of telecommunications. Having a single vendor for all our telecommunications in Vodafone is very important as this facilitates continuity, simplified management and helps us to maximise cost savings.”
