STEADY GROUND Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
01/2016
Magazine Article
For Jason Rouillard, it was working the family's woodlot with his dad that hooked him on working in the forest from a young age. Rouillard's family owned a private woodlot, and father and son would ...log the land using a chainsaw and cable skidder. The elder Rouillard was also a staple of the forest industry, working in management with Resolute for 32 years. Formally, Rouillard started his career as Jason Rouillard Logging in 2003, working as a subcontractor for a contractor who was logging for Abitibi in Thunder Bay. When he first started, Rouillard owned a single piece of equipment, a harvester. As he became more aware of the needs of the operation, he added a forwarder, then a road machine to start building resource roads, and the business grew from there. "It's a good market that accepts any kind of wood," Rouillard says. "Like the wood that is not well-suited for the sawmill, for lumber, we can send that to Rentech. It's value added to any forest that is not good for lumber."
PUSHING PRODUCTION Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
11/2015
Magazine Article
"The fibre supply is there," says Maxime Langlais, general manager of RFP's Thunder Bay sawmill and pellet plant. "The mill is able to reach 300 million board feet with some modifications and ...upgrades and we were expecting the market to come back." Although the planer mill does not contain a machine supplied by Comact (RFP is using a Gilbertech instead), the planer mill at Thunder Bay has been integral for Comact over the past decade. The planer mill was the site of the first installation of the Comact GradExperl optimization system, which has helped the company carve out a strong marketshare for automatic grading machines. With the GradExpert technology in place, the planer mill can process up to 230 boards per minute. The increase in lumber production resulted in a need to solidify the logistics systems in place for moving lumber from mill to market. The lumber destined for the U.S. market is transported by rail, which has, at times, been a challenge for the mill. In the winter of 2013-14, the mill experienced a shortage of rail cars during the extreme cold that settled into the region for several months. The mill had to curtail one shift for four to five months to compensate for the production reduction that happened as a result. Although the shortage in rail cars that occurred during the extreme weather is not expected to be a common occurrence, additional trucks are now available to reach domestic markets. Although trucking shipments comes at a higher cost than rail, the option is there should a similar weather issue ever arise.
FULL OF FIBRE Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
09/2015
Magazine Article
During my visit to the woods, I caught up with Charlie Baird, a local contractor for Milltown Forestry Services who, along with his team, was working on a tract of land in need of selective cutting. ...Despite being well into the spring months in Nova Scotia, the snow in the forest was still knee-high in some spots, the harsh reminder of one of the worst winters on record in the province. One that forced Baird and his team to spend most of the winter digging the harvester into the snow and cutting blind, based on constant variations in the deep snow. In Nova Scotia, stud logs are sold to the mill for as much as three times more than the stems being sent to biomass operations. When asked, Baird called the pricing "bearable" considering the cost of doing business. But the price being paid for fibre didn't seem to be the biggest issue hampering Baird's work. "Our biggest issue is keeping wood moving," Baird said. "April weight restrictions are hurting the operations. They're not high enough."
ASHLAND ASSET Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
07/2015
Magazine Article
"Comact proposed this innovative idea to process the dry and dressed lumber with rough, green lumber," says Jérôme Pelletier, general manager of J.D. Irving Limited's sawmill division. "Therefore, we ...only need one trim line, fully optimized, which reduced the capital cost. That's how we got to the design that we have today." "We talked about this idea of doing a combination sawmill and planer mill in the same building, the same pr," says Eric Michaud, senior vice- president of business development for Comact. "We came up with this idea of using a GradExpert to optimize the trim in the sawmill and, at the same time, scanning the dressed and dry wood from the planer and grade all of the boards on the same line." "We're putting young people to work in a traditional business," says Pelletier. "The new technology makes it attractive to the younger people." This next generation or workers will be the driving force behind the mill meeting its annual production targets as spruce demand continues to strengthen as the market recovers. Currently the company ships spruce from its six spruce mills as far west as Ontario and straight down the east coast all the way to Florida.
Sonic Grading Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
05/2015
Magazine Article
"Once we decided to use acoustic technology to produce MSR, we chose Metriguard," he says. "They have long been the industry leader and specialize in MSR." "This transverse method of producing MSR is ...ideal for mills that have limited space for installation," says Dan Uskoski, vice-president of sales for Metriguard. "The density-only component of this equipment can be an important tool in sawmills to help make lumber resource allocation decisions before drying. Greg McCoy values Metriguard's input and candor regarding equipment capabilities and has found them to be above-board and honest. He has been impressed with Metriguard's efforts to ensure proper operation of the system. In short, he knew that Metriguard would "make it right."
BIG WOOD HARVESTER Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
05/2015
Magazine Article
Now the company is flourishing in the vast woodland surrounding Mackenzie. Working with a 200km, radius of Mackenzie, most of which extends to the northern boundary of that range, the Duz Cho logging ...teams are progressing through the vast forests of mountain pine beetle-affected wood. As a result, the crews are currently logging an annual wood diet of approximately 70 per cent pine and 30 per cent spruce, trying to rid the forests of as much beetle wood as they can, before it can no longer be harvested for use. During my visit, 1 met the Duz Cho team in the forests southwest of Mackenzie, just off the road to Fort St. James near the recent Mount Milligan copper-gold mining development. The harvesting site featured an operator ripping through MPB stems with a Tigercat 845C mounted with a Tigercat 5702 felling saw. A second operator in the area was running an 870C, also fitted with a 5702. The thin stems were allowing the operator to collect an average of six to eight stems at a time, stacking the trees for processing. The processing portion of the Duz Cho operation is subcontracted to a local company, who uses primarily a combination of Hitachi forestry machines with Waratah heads. "To find young skilled workers is getting harder and harder in the logging industry," Robert MacCarthy says. "Young people are drawn to Alberta's oil and gas industry for bigger dollars versus the logging industry, which provides a steady workflow. It's tougher to get young kids to come that way."
STEM SOLUTIONS Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
03/2015
Magazine Article
"We had to cut a cookie with the old head," Seth Dickinson says. "With this one, the laser find edge is really good and the mill really likes what we produce." "The link arm on the C, between the ...drive arms, is slotted," Dickinson explains. "With the B, it's hooked solid. 1 find that the slotted version really works nice because it gets a good grip on the tree." "When we first started cutting back in July, the block we were cutting in was really, really poor," Dickinson says. "We were just barely getting by with the B. We were doing between 1,000 to 1,200 trees per eleven-and-a-half-hour shift. With the C head, it put us up to 1,400 to 1,700 in that time period."
UP FROM THE ASHES Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
01/2015
Magazine Article
"The design was the result of a collaborative effort by a team of Sinclar and Lakeland staff with the help of experienced sawmill vendors and engineers," operations manager Bruce McLean said. "The ...safety standard was to meet new expected standards in sawmill safety, including dust management and guarding." "The debarkers were identified as Class II, Div II under the NFPA 499 standard and they were certified in the Nicholson shop by Intertek," McLean said. "The upgrades were with the electrical components. In addition, a dust collection system designed to minimize dust in and adjacent to the machine." "Allied Blower provided a solution that would aggressively remove much of the wood dust from all the sources; saws, chipping heads, chippers, transfers, hog and barkers," McLean said. "In addition, three of the six baghouses currently installed, have air returning to the plant to retain heat and keep the buildings from too great a negative pressure. These baghouses have Grecon spark detection and abort gates both before and afterthe baghouse."He continued, "make up roof air fans throughout the building provide positive pressure with general airflow from top to bottom. The air permit limits required the use of baghouses as there is seven times the airflow than previously."
BREAKING IT DOWN Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
11/2014
Magazine Article
B&B has realized several benefits from this investment, Bégin & Bégin general manager Frédéric Dubé. "With the old system we only had one breakdown option, and that was minimum opening face (MOF). ...With the new line we have added another option which is full log breakdown. This gives us a more optimum breakdown solution for the boards that are produced." He also reiterated that he is pleased with the benefit that comes with both front and back side scanning. "We only had one scanner before so we had to scan it once, turn it and then scan for the second side. Now we scan the log once and we're done." The 3-knee carriage handles high value logs up to 36" diameter, with output processed by the USNR vertical resaw and a combination gang/edger. B&B's old carriage system had front scanning only, and with outdated optimization the only solution available was based on minimum opening face (MOF). The new system with MillExpert optimization significantly expands this capability to include full log breakdown grade sawing solutions generated from dense 3D modelling via data collected from front and back side LASAR sensors. The MillExpert system generates not only the initial breakdown, but also utilizes logic from downstream processes to generate a solution that will be used to further break down the piece into boards.
YARDER INNOVATION Macklin, Andrew
Canadian forest industries,
11/2014
Magazine Article
George Lambert contacted industry partners to assist in the development of the LC550. They partnered with Caterpillar on the engine and transmission package, with Caterpillar completing extensive ...research to meet the specific needs outlined by contractors. The package settled on for the LC550 is the CAT C9 Acert 8.8 litre engine and Cat CX28 Powershift transmission (5 forward speeds), which provides the power, fuel efficiency and ease-of-operation demanded by yarder operators. T-Mar also teamed up with Parker on the hydraulics and control system for the LC550. Together they developed a version of the Parker ICan controller that includes programming and controls designed specifically by T-Mar for efficient operation. One year later, in October of 2014, the first LC550 was completed. The yarder had already been pre-sold to a client who immediately put the LC550 to work in the forest on a small off the coast of Vancouver Island near Campbell River. The first few days included the typical rainy and muddy steep slope conditions often encountered by contractors working the coastal slopes. The wood diet being cut by the contractor is a second growth softwood mix of fir, hemlock, and cedar. Most of the stems are 100ft.- 150ft. in length, and the yarder is successfully moving 3-5 stems per turn.
