5 REVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES FROM FINVALIA FOR THE WOOD INDUSTRY
Finvalia has been under development for one year, the right time to present the project’s first advances demonstrating how digitalization and artificial intelligence are already transforming the wood industry from Galicia to the whole world.
A consortium to modernize the entire value chain
The Finvalia project, driven by Couceiro, Foresa, Puertas Vales and Finsa, counts on the collaboration of universities, technology centers, and leading SMEs (Gradiant, CETIM, Imatia, USC, CESGA, DxC, Fibranor…). All entities are working until 2026 on 26 pilots covering everything from the factory to the market, within program IN854A 2023/05, subsidized by IGAPE-Xunta and co-financed by FEDER. Below, we share the advances presented, achievements, and impacts:
| Advances presented | Challenge | What we have achieved |
| Intelligent maintenance | IIoT sensors + AI to detect anomalies and plan stoppages. | Fewer breakdowns, higher availability. |
| Intralogistics and traceability | RFID inventory linked to the WMS. | Stock counting in 1 day with 5 people (previously took several days and the whole team). |
| Smart market | Multilingual chatbot trained with thousands of technical documents + product image generation. | Customer responses in seconds and visual proposals adjusted to real stock. |
| Smart product | Digital twin predicting density, humidity, and quality of MDF boards in real time. | Fine parameter adjustment and waste reduction. |
| Sustainability | • Steam explosion to valorize biomass without chemicals. • Gas monitoring in dryers. • Waste reuse. | Lower carbon footprint and effective circular economy. |
A 1900s technology to turn waste into resource
The steam explosion technique—described in 1926 but now optimized—is applied at Fibranor to separate lignocellulosic components using high-pressure steam. The result: clean secondary raw materials, key for more sustainable boards and new bioproducts.
A connected wood industry in 2026
With the validation of these pilots, Finvalia moves towards its goal: a connected, efficient, and circular wood industry where data guides every decision and waste becomes a resource.
We will continue sharing milestones on this blog, and you can watch the event streaming at this link. Thank you for joining us on the path to Galician Industry 4.0!
