The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund is re-launching the Forest Business Accelerator to provide forest business startups and seed stage businesses with a comprehensive commercialization curriculum and connections to industry experts, customers, suppliers, partners, pilots and investors.

This accelerator is for startups and seed stage businesses making use of low-grade material or underutilized species for a wide array of advanced wood-based bioproducts such as packaging, biochar, biofuels or advanced building materials, or developing precision forest management technologies that improve forest or supply chain operations or infrastructure.

The forests of northern New England provide countless environmental, social and economic benefits to millions of people who reside within a day’s drive. The Northern Forest that spans from Maine to northern New York is one of the world’s largest intact temperate forests comprised of a mix of hardwood and softwood. And unlike forests in other parts of the world, the Northern Forest is primarily owned by thousands of small family farms and individual landowners. The future of the Northern Forest relies on economic decisions they make and the economic conditions they face.

One of the best strategies to keep our forests intact for future generations is to support a thriving forest economy. Sustainable forest management combined with a healthy supply chain begins with landowners and those managing and protecting our forests and continues in cooperation with businesses that harvest, transport and process logs, manufacture wood products and use byproducts to create energy, packaging or other essential goods. Forest products are part of a circular economy that minimizes waste and maximizes efficient use, re-use, recycling and regeneration of biodegradable wood products.

But since about two-thirds of the wood harvested in the region is considered low grade with lower economic value, products that utilize low grade wood or underutilized species are an essential part of the overall supply chain. In recent years traditional markets for low grade wood such as paper and energy have shifted, causing economic challenges for the industry.