SLOW RECOVERY BIOMASS EMERGES It hasn’t always been easy for Rouillard and his team, who endured the devastat-ing recession that knocked so many out of the Canadian forest industry. What has allowed Rouillard and his team to weather the storm, initially, was the ability to specialize in wood lengths that were still experiencing a reasonable amount of demand. “We were small when the crash came,” Rouillard says. “But we were always cut-to-length. So right around the time when the crash came, was the same time that 9ft. and 10ft. started to become popular in the area. Because we were a cut-to-length op-eration, we were able to start producing that for the local mill (RFP Thunder Bay) and that’s what bridged the gap between the crash and today.” But the recovery from the crash has been slow, making it difficult to stabilize profit margins and look towards future growth. Also, there has been no significant bump in the price paid for logs from the forest, and some of the lumber cut gets rejected before it even makes it to the sawmill site. But in the last several months, the emer-gence of a new sector has provided greater stability for logging operations like Rouil-lard’s; the wood pellet sector. The arrival of Rentech in Atikokan which, at capacity, is expected to produce upwards of 100,000 tonnes of white pel-lets per year, has provided a source for fi-bre rejected by the sawmill. “It’s a good market that accepts any kind of wood,” Rouillard says. “Like the wood that is not well-suited for the saw-mill, for lumber, we can send that to Rent-ech. It’s value added to any forest that is not good for lumber.” That’s good news for logging crews in the area surrounding Atikokan, where 45,000 tonnes of Rentech’s pellets are being used as fuel at the OPG generating station. The financial prospect of cutting wood strictly for use by Rentech is not a very profitable one based on today’s pricing structure, but it certainly provides piece of mind in cut-ting blocks when a significant percentage of thin, broken or bent stems can destroy any chance of a profitable venture for a logging crew. The logs themselves are chipped onsite at Rentech’s plant at Atikokan, providing another cost savings measure for the log-ging contractors. Rather than having to chip or grind the wood on site, then trans-port the chips to the pellet plant, the con-tractor can instead divert a truck of logs to the pellet mill rather than its usual desti-nation, the sawmill. With the intake at Rentech, the new opportunity at least provides a break-even outlet for the wood not usable for the mill, which provides financial security for log-ging contractors. CHALLENGES REMAIN BAD BOY BLUE BEATS STUMPS INTO SPLINTERS. 3010P TUB GRINDER • Turns stumps, logs, branches, pallets and green waste into mulch or compost in no time • CAT C15 475 hp or 540 hp Tier III diesel engine Call today or visit us online to learn more. View products in action on our YouTube channel! • Outfitted with a 30” oscillating stacking conveyor 888-402-4638 www.duratech.info 22 Canadian BIOMASS Like many harvesters in regions where wood supplies are plentiful, there is still the challenge of getting qualified operators to run the equipment. “I’ve heard other contractors abroad say the same thing; it’s hard to get good, solid people,” Rouillard says. “We’re not seeing a whole lot of young people coming in to the trade, learning it and sticking with it. Finding good quality people in general is getting harder.” Rouillard believes that if the entire wood products industry can find stability, whether it be through secondary avenues for products like biomass, or a steady mar-ket for Canadian lumber, that will be the most valuable tool in attracting people to work in the woods. Along with that stability comes a commitment to real education for the sector, not just generic heavy equipment or heavy machinery training. That means setting up formal education based on the equipment and technology that is in use in the forest, including chippers, grinding, harvesters, forwarders and logging trucks. Combined with the new technologies that could appeal to a generation that has grown up with innovations in software and computer engineering, these programs could attract a younger generation to work in the forests throughout Canada. Thanks to the stability that the emer-gence of northwestern Ontario’s wood pellet sector has provided for contractors like Rouillard, he and other industry pro-fessionals might finally be able to able to spare the time to build a plan to attract the next generation to the industry rather than continue to constantly stress about the bottom line. • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
Canadian Biomass November/December 2015: Page 22
