Christan Volk

Christian Volk grew up in a family of foresters where his dad managed a community forest in Switzerland for over 40 years. Therefore he developed a big interest in forestry in his early years and spent most of his spare time in the forest helping his father.

After graduating from High school, he decided to first do a trade as a heavy duty mechanic at the Timberjack dealership. Shortly after finishing his trade, he went back to the forestry and worked as a forwarder operator for a German contractor in the private forest of the Fuerst of Fuerstenberg.

In these years he learned a lot about thinning as this was the majority of the work in planted spruce stands from the 60^th and 70^th. In 1998 at the age of 22 he started his own logging company, Volktrans.

At the beginning, he started with a small harvester and a small forwarder and even though the competition in Switzerland was high in the sector, he succeeded because of a good quality of work. Over the years the company grew bigger and added bigger harvesters to the fleet to log mature wood.

Another addition was a big woodchipper to clean up residue piles and produce woodchips that were used for electricity and heat. Volktrans also specialized in steep slope logging and bought the first tedder system with integrated winch in harvester and forwarder in 2008.

The whole time the company existed, Volktrans never did a clearcut. All the work was thinning, selective cut and overstory removal.

In 2015 the company had 3 harvesters, 4 forwarders, a woodchipper and a skidder, as well as several winch systems for steep slope logging.

In 2015, Volktrans was sold, and Volktrans-Canada was founded. The company started in the North Thompson as a contractor for Canfor, with the focus on steep slope logging.

In 2021/2022 we did the first pilot projects in commercial thinning for the Community Forest Revelstoke and for Interfor Adamslake.

We currently work in commercial thinning for a private owner in the Kootenays.