SEPTEMBER 2020
Cover: AJD Forest Products Has Plan In Place
GRAYLING, Michigan – Veteran lumbermen Tim Neff and Tony Nash are on a mission to bring Michigan hardwood manufacturer AJD Forest Products into a new era.
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Associate Editor, Timber Processing
Inside This Issue
The Issues: No Barnum & Bailey Act But We’re Trying
If you didn’t know any better, you would think the Timber Processing & Energy Expo, scheduled for September 30 to October 2 in Portland, Oregon, has not been cancelled. You probably do know better, if you’ve seen the numerous announcements that indeed it has been cancelled until the next one in 2022. But as you can tell from this issue of Timber Processing, TP&EE lives on. . .at least in print, and in video, too, for that matter.
Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Timber Processing
NEWSfeed
- U.S. South Leads Lumber Output
- Housing Starts Catch Fire
- AWC Names President/CEO
- Binderholz Wins Klausner Sawmill
Safety In Mind
Things changed quickly in North America around the middle of March with the appearance of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Individuals, businesses and governments all reacted and continue to react. “We definitely saw people pulling back, I think just out of fear and uncertainty,” says Seth Vance, Chief Operating Officer of Timber Automation. “As we look at the second half of March and even most of April, it just seemed like everyone was in a wait-and-see mode, to try to get a sense of what was going on and where things were headed. We weren’t sure what rules and regulations would look like day to day in March and April.”
Article by David Abbott, Senior Associate Editor, Timber Processing
Timber Processing & Energy Expo Showcase
As earlier announced, the Timber Processing & Energy Expo that was scheduled for September 30 to October 2 in Portland, Oregon has been cancelled due to the pandemic. The event was nearing exhibitor sellout and many of those exhibitors had planned to run advertisements in this issue of Timber Processing, which was to be the show preview issue. But as they say, the show must go on, and even though there is no show in Portland, there is still a Showcase in this issue, which has been made available to the advertisers in this issue who were also signed up to exhibit for the Portland event in September. In this issue these companies have supplied editorial profiles and photos. But that’s not all, these same companies have been invited to submit videos of their operations to be shown on the TP&EE web site Showcase Video section, which will be available for viewing on the same dates as the Portland show would have been held, September 30-October 2. We’ll keep reminding you until then. That website is timberprocessingandenergyexpo.com/tpee-showcase/.
MACHINERYrow
- Gilbert Partners With Scantec
- South Coast Goes With GradeScan
- Morbark Announces Boehler As CEO
- Con-Vey Appoints Product Manager
- Ozark Machinery Deals For Barko
- Schmid Energy Joins Fink Machine
- Siebert Leads Ligna Press Team
Find Us On Social
AJD Forest Products Has Plan In Place
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Associate Editor, Timber Processing
GRAYLING, Michigan – Veteran lumbermen Tim Neff and Tony Nash are on a mission to bring Michigan hardwood manufacturer AJD Forest Products into a new era – an era that sees the 16MMBF hardwood mill produce a few more pieces, sure, but mainly produce lumber with up-to-date machinery at industry standard speeds, and with greater recovery and efficiency. Nash points to the fact that at first, when AJD acquired the mill from Scott Paper in 1979, it was primarily a softwood mill, and the original AJD operations team converted it to hardwood. The cost of evolution has been high, and the conversion lengthy.
“With the problems that we see now in the industry and nationwide, the lack of qualified help,” Nash says, “to combat that we’ve got to optimize the mill, and that means automation. We are putting in an optimized edger to reduce the amount of people we don’t have.”
The addition of a Cleereman Lumber Pro heading was the first of s series of projects to upgrade AJD Forest Products.
The mill trends heavy to oak, processing about 200 bolts per day.
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