Maritime lumber, wood products industry is embracing the future
HALIFAX - Fritz Wirathmueller stands in front of his trade show booth and talks about the high-tech turnkey pellet mills his firm is selling.
The bearded, Austrian-born vice-president of research and development for Nackawic-based Pellet Systems International came to New Brunswick in the early 1980s to help sell sawmill machinery for Valley Machine Works Ltd.
Valley exports its products across North America and internationally to countries such as South Africa and Germany.
Two years ago, Valley set up Pellet Systems International, which sells pelletmaking operations ranging in size from a half-tonne per hour to 10 tonnes per hour, as well as so-called energy cabins.
Energy cabins are automatic heating systems that combine solar energy with wood pellet boiler technology to provide central heating for buildings.
“We saw the potential decline in the lumber industry,” said Wirathmueller.
“We were getting inquiries from our current customers to get into something else to do alternative things with their byproducts.”
Valley’s entry into the energy business is just one example of the transformation of the forestry industry in the Maritimes.
Members of the region’s lumber industry gathered in Halifax on Wednesday for the Maritime Lumber Bureau’s 69th annual convention. The theme for this year’s gathering is Winds of Change and the convention features talks on new sawmill technologies, new market opportunities and new products.
Turmoil in the United States housing market has been the major driver of the changes sweeping through the industry.
The implosion of the American subprime mortgage market has devastated the U.S. housing industry, with a year’s worth of housing inventory, excluding projects still under construction, now up for sale, said Doug Wilkes, a Vancouver- based forest products advisor for Deloitte & Touche.
Housing starts in the U.S. have dropped to a 17-year low, he added.
The decline in U.S. demand, combined with the continued flood of lumber from British Columbia’s pine beetle-ravaged forests has had an adverse effect on the Canadian solid wood industry, he noted.
“The only good thing I can say is I don’t think things can get much worse.”
Diana Blenkhorn, president and chief executive officer of the Maritime Lumber Bureau, said biomass and bio-energy products represent an important opportunity for the forestry industry as the costs continue to increase and as electrical power from oil becomes more expensive.
“Both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have increased wood pellet production,” said Blenkhorn.
Blenkhorn said the forestry industry in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia continues to embrace technology in order to improve efficiency.
The industry, she said, isn’t what it used to be.
“(Mills) all have lasers, optimizers, scanners, computerized operations. We really are the largest employers of technology in the country,”she said.
Yvon Corneau, an expert in the use of technology in mills, spoke at the lumber bureau convention on Wednesday afternoon.
Corneau said mill simulation software and thorough inspections of operations can help reduce mill costs and improve efficiency.
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