"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.