Beetle-kill business Fibre constraints tighten near MPB ground zero BIOMASS CANADIAN Volume 14 No. 6 Editor -Amie Silverwood (289) 221-8946 [email protected] Associate Editor -Andrew Macklin (905) 713-4358 [email protected] Contributors -Sara Lynn Grady, Treena Hein, Cam McAlpine , Gordon Murray, Christopher Rees, Dr. Donald L. Smith, and Annie Webb Editorial Director/Group Publisher -Scott Jamieson (519) 429-3966 ext 244 [email protected] Market Production Manager Josée Crevier Ph: (514) 425-0025 Fax: (514) 425-0068 [email protected] National Sales Manager Ross Anderson Ph: (519) 429-5188 Fax: (519) 429-3094 [email protected] Quebec Sales Josée Crevier Ph: (514) 425-0025 Fax: (514) 425-0068 [email protected] Western Sales Manager Tim Shaddick [email protected] Ph: (604) 264-1158 Fax: (604) 264-1367 Media Designer -Emily Sun Canadian Biomass is published six times a year: February, April, June, August, October, and December. Published and printed by Annex Business Media. Printed in Canada ISSN 2290-3097 Circulation Carol Nixon e-mail: [email protected] P.O. Box 51058 Pincourt, QC J7V 9T3 Subscription Rates: Canada -1 Yr $49.50; 2 Yr $87.50; 3 Yr $118.50 Single Copy -$9.00 (Canadian prices do not include applicable taxes) USA – 1 Yr $60 US; Foreign – 1 Yr $77 US Occasionally, Canadian Biomass magazine will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive this information, please contact our circulation department in any of the four ways listed above. No part of the editorial content of this publication may be reprinted without the publisher’ s written permission ©2014 Annex Business Media, All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’ s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca I recently spent a week near Prince George, B.C., where I was visiting sev-eral sawmills and pellet plants to see how the industry in the region hardest hit by the mountain pine beetle has adapted 10 years after the forests died. It is difficult to de-scribe the vast forests of dead trees for anyone who hasn’t seen them. In some regions, there may have been up to 20 per cent of living spruce but much of the forests stood dead. The dead pine had to be treated with care to pre-vent breakage. Gulbran-son, one of the logging contractors that works with L&M Lumber, which shares a site and ownership with Nechako Lumber and Premium Pellet, is using a decking machine to gently pile the lumber before processing. The decker picks up the logs from above, causing less breakage than a skidder pushing the wood into a pile. Even with special treatment, however, I noticed a sizable pile of broken logs. Even when the logs are carefully har-vested, processed and taken to the mill, they aren’t what they used to be. A blue ring around the outside of the log is a tell-tale sign the log hosted the beetle at one time. Deep checks are also common in the brittle wood that would crack rather than bend in a windstorm. L&M Lumber added an optimizer to spot these defects and to position the logs to find the best solution for each log. Still, recovery isn’t what it used to be – much of the log is now unsalvageable for lumber. Of course, that means the sawmill is making more sawdust and chips – which is good for companies that depend on sawmill residuals to make pellets or pulp. But at some point, there won’t be enough value in the logs for the sawmills to both-er bringing them in (see Sara Lynn Grady’s article on page 11). The dead pine trees that stood close to towns, sawmills or accessi-ble roads have mostly been cut down with a new gen-eration of growth pushing up in their place. In areas where the pine has not been removed, they cast shadows over the new growth and slow the forests’ regener-ation. Even worse, they provide ideal fuel for forest fires that could be devas-tating as the new growth burns alongside the old. The provincial government is tasked with answering the question: how do we keep a healthy and vibrant forest indus-try in a region where so many of the trees have died? The solution offered is an interesting one that may provide pellet producers with more clout when seeking a secure source of fibre over the long term. The provincial government introduced a sup-plemental forest licence meant to encour-age the harvesting of the dead pine that is less accessible and this new licence is not available to sawmills. Harvesting and trucking the dead pine that remains is an expensive option for pellet mills but forest companies have a long tradition of trading log profiles, chips and sawmill residuals to the benefit of the industry as a whole. Supplementary forest licences will provide pellet producers with a seat at the negotiation table. 4 Canadian BIOMASS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014
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