Brotherly Sawmill by Jennifer McCary

About 1:30 a.m. on April 5, 1997, a fire of undetermined cause turned brothers Don and Jeff Parker’s world on end. But three days after their Parker Lumber sawmill was reduced to a pile of rubble, production was back in full swing thanks to the kindness of neighboring sawmillers Reuben Lumbra and sons Benny and Stephen. For the next nine months, the Parkers manufactured lumber at the old Lumbra Hardwoods mill site, vacated the previous year when the Lumbras moved into their new facility. Lumber production was then trucked the 12 miles back to Bradford for surfacing and profiling in Parker Lumber’s planer mill.

“Those were tough times,” says Jeff, age 51, “but really, it was a blessing in disguise because it allowed us to modernize. Fires usually are, in hindsight, if the owners are progressive and looking to update anyway. So that gave us an opportunity to hugely increase our yield.” Building on the old foundation, the brothers started with a clean slate, installing newer equ

Is It Time To Go 'Lean'? by Mike Lipke

Current economic conditions are causing companies to learn to be lean in ways they hadn’t thought of a short time ago. Businesses that have been around for decades are failing because of missteps or failure to adjust to new market realities. We can all think of big names we thought would never go away. Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns, and in our own industry, Pope & Talbot, represented institutions with long histories of success that couldn’t survive this downturn in the economy.

The fall from some of the most prosperous years in history to some of the worst in so short a time has been unprecedented. Manpower reductions and curtailments are a way of life while the wood products industry balances to a home building and remodeling market in decline. Though conditions are rough, good companies are also taking time to rethink their business and find the next reincarnation that will take them back to prosperity.

Ligna Preview

Brewco Inc. is a world leader in thin-kerf resawing technology, allowing a mill to process grade lumber without the need for filing room support.

Brewco manufactures horizontal resaw systems that process 4-sided cants off a headsaw. Brewco also manufactures thin-kerf headrigs, circle headrigs, carriages, log decks, grade edgers, and material handling equipment for the grade lumber industry. Brewco also manufactures a complete line of equipment for the pallet mill industry. Items include not only horizontal resaws, but heavy-duty gang saws, trim saws, scragg mills, short log debarkers, and high-speed edgers with efficient waste removal systems.

New Saw Shop

Japan’s Orvis Corporation started up its new radiata pine sawmill in Himeji City late last year, featuring machinery supplied by Finland’s Heinola Sawmill Machinery and a complete saw shop supplied by Vollmer.

Established in 1959, Orvis has more than 246 employees. In addition to the main business of sawmilling, it has three other divisions. One of these manufactures prefabricated housing, another is real estate (houses and apartments), and the third is the operation of Karaoke bars.

“The sawmilling side of the business concentrates on radiata pine logs imported from New Zealand, according to Yuji Nakahama, Executive Director of Orvis Corp. “Around 70% of our production is packing materials including cable drums, and the rest is pallets in standard and special sizes for a wide range of industries,” he comments.

Ready To Ship by David Abbott

Atlanta Hardwood Corp. (AHC), a privately-owned wholesale lumber company, is the umbrella over a family of forest products companies with eight operating facilities, including drying and molding, five distribution centers under the banner Hardwoods Inc., and an export division called AHC Export Group, based in Huntersville, NC, near Charlotte, with sales offices in China. With the recent acquisition of the former Averitt Hardwoods facilities in Clarksville, Tenn., the company continues to grow.

AHC ships products to distributors and end users all over the U.S., Europe and Asia, though the bulk of its sales are domestic, concentrated in the Southeast. With more than 50 varieties of hardwood lumber in its inventory, AHC specializes in Appalachian hardwoods, processing, distributing and exporting more than 40MMBF annually.

Equipment & Supplier News

Baxley Equipment and Comact have announced a marketing and distribution arrangement that has Baxley selling Comact products in the Southern U.S.

Simon Potvin, Vice-President of Business Development and a shareholder of Comact, says, “The Baxley team, at their former company Hi-Tech Engineering, did an excellent job representing Comact in the Southern U.S. for many years. We are expecting the same kind of results from this new deal. Our U.S. customers are very important to us and we feel the addition of Baxley improves our position in this very important market.”

The deal includes most Comact products including the OLI-CS3 and the TBL3 systems for primary and secondary breakdowns in 16 Southern states. In addition, Baxley has been granted a license to fabricate the Wave Feeder product line in its Georgia and Arkansas facilities, resulting in quicker deliveries and savings on freight.

Hard News In The Making

Europe is the largest producer and consumer of wood pellets in the world, according to Wood Resource Quarterly from Wood Resources International. Consumption in 2008 was estimated to be more than 8 million tons, with Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy being the largest consumers on the continent. Sweden is the largest producer and consumer of wood pellets in the world with a total production of 1.7 million tons in 2008. The country also imported 400,000 tons last year to meet the total domestic demand of 2.1 million tons from both power plants and households.

There are more than 450 pellet-producing plants in Europe, with many new projects planned over the next five years. The United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are the countries that likely will see some of the fastest increase in pellet consumption over the next few years, according to the report.

Honest Assessment by Miles Elliot

The sawmill business today is tough and it gets tougher every year. Log prices go up even when the price for lumber is reduced. It’s difficult to find good employees and harder to keep them once they’re trained. The market changes every day. And we can’t forget about actually making the lumber from our logs. If our yields are off, or our production is out of sync then the money we think we are making is a big loss!

Hello, my name is Miles Elliott and my family has been in the sawmill business for more than 60 years in Estill, SC. I have been working at Elliott Sawmilling for more than 40 years—since I was in high school. I have been involved in every aspect of the sawmill business. My areas of expertise are production, yield and quality control. Our plant primarily produces southern yellow pine lumber.

New Products & Technologies

Williams and White’s Series 2 Top and Face with Plunge Grind option is a perfect machine for grinding all tooth geometries, emphasizing easy operation and is fully hydraulic.

The plunge grind option means you can grind any custom top profile including V-top. The machine can grind a V from a square tooth because no gear box is used in the system. Having direct drive when topping facing or plunge grinding means less wear components and therefore less breakdown.

Off to Ligna TP Goes by Rich Donnell

Economic downturns tend to bring out new ideas. After all, who wants to sit around and mope all day long? At the very least we can brainstorm and come up with ideas that might provide a spark for our organization. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t.

Two months ago, we mentioned that our company, Hatton-Brown Publishers, is starting up a new magazine, Wood Bioenergy. The response has been overwhelming. Our editors have already been in the field to visit job sites and conduct interviews. The first issue is due out in May. You won’t be disappointed. If you’re a potential advertiser, you should have been contacted by now. But if you haven’t been contacted, send me an e-mail and I’ll “sic” our salesperson on you.