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7. Low Grade Wood Markets
Strategy Target: Increase marketing opportunities for low-grade materials from private woodlands.
Highlights . . .
Midwest – Community Forestry Resource Center has been involved in efforts to promote the use of woody biomass as an energy source including:
CFRC also partnered with Stora Enso in the fall of 2006 to expand the range of their pulpwood procurement to an area of Wisconsin in need of low-grade harvesting options for private landowners.
Nationally -- The National Community Forestry Business Alliance was founded by a group of entrepreneurial rural community nonprofit and business leaders, committed to finding and implementing a ‘triple bottom line approach’ to economic revitalization: one that integrates forest stewardship, successful wood products businesses, and community values. This proposal advances a model for using learning, sharing and collaborating networks to support individual efforts and increase the cumulative scale of impact while helping spread the most effective practices and resources more widely. Key overall objectives include:
The National Community Forestry Business Alliance will unite our collective forces and, as a group, better coordinate efforts, pool resources and knowledge, reach out to an even broader network of partners and stimulate market awareness and production capacity. Working and learning together, small, local enterprises have a much better chance of advancing successfully.
The time for this alliance is ripe. We have entered an era of heightened consumer awareness in which demand is growing for “sustainable” products. Indicators of this developing trend include: the maturation of the green, socially-conscious labeling systems (FSC, Fair Trade, and others); growth in demand for LEED® Certified buildings; an increasing number of government mandates for sustainably sourced products; industry requirements for responsible procurement; and, lender risk reduction strategies that are starting to recognize the reduced costs of a more sustainable economy.
The Alliance partners will work in three strategic areas to achieve our collective goal.
We recently received a project grant of $50,000 from Citigroup in support of the Alliance’s work. We are seeking a matching grant of $50,000 to enable us to move forward with the following projects:
Highlights . . .
Midwest – Community Forestry Resource Center has been involved in efforts to promote the use of woody biomass as an energy source including:
- A study in the Superior National Forest on the economic, ecological, and social effects of biomass harvesting (report to be released late-summer);
- Collaboration with Laurentian Energy Authority's two biomass-burning district energy plants in northern MN;
- Exploring markets for low-grade wood in the Twin Cities metro area;
- And helping to initiate a process to develop standards for biomass harvesting in forests and brushlands in Minnesota (standards completed by July 1).
CFRC also partnered with Stora Enso in the fall of 2006 to expand the range of their pulpwood procurement to an area of Wisconsin in need of low-grade harvesting options for private landowners.
-- Katie Marshall, Community Forestry Resource Center
Nationally -- The National Community Forestry Business Alliance was founded by a group of entrepreneurial rural community nonprofit and business leaders, committed to finding and implementing a ‘triple bottom line approach’ to economic revitalization: one that integrates forest stewardship, successful wood products businesses, and community values. This proposal advances a model for using learning, sharing and collaborating networks to support individual efforts and increase the cumulative scale of impact while helping spread the most effective practices and resources more widely. Key overall objectives include:
- Advancing forest stewardship and community economic development through a more solid link between the sustainable forestry sector and the marketplace;
- Fostering successful community forestry businesses by networking efforts at the local, regional and national level;
- Increasing market access and sales of products from community forestry businesses.
The National Community Forestry Business Alliance will unite our collective forces and, as a group, better coordinate efforts, pool resources and knowledge, reach out to an even broader network of partners and stimulate market awareness and production capacity. Working and learning together, small, local enterprises have a much better chance of advancing successfully.
The time for this alliance is ripe. We have entered an era of heightened consumer awareness in which demand is growing for “sustainable” products. Indicators of this developing trend include: the maturation of the green, socially-conscious labeling systems (FSC, Fair Trade, and others); growth in demand for LEED® Certified buildings; an increasing number of government mandates for sustainably sourced products; industry requirements for responsible procurement; and, lender risk reduction strategies that are starting to recognize the reduced costs of a more sustainable economy.
The Alliance partners will work in three strategic areas to achieve our collective goal.
- Networking – Provide a forum for like-minded businesses to learn from each other, share experiences and expertise, and work together to better leverage market opportunities.
- Delivery of Capacity Building Tools & Assistance – Increase knowledge and capacity of community forestry wood products businesses.
- Marketing & Communications -- Enhance market access opportunities for community forestry wood products businesses by building widespread recognition of their products and facilitating business relationships and sales opportunities between producers and target markets.
We recently received a project grant of $50,000 from Citigroup in support of the Alliance’s work. We are seeking a matching grant of $50,000 to enable us to move forward with the following projects:
- Document Alliance Producers and Integrate with Existing Databases – Develop knowledge base of the products offered by alliance partners, and integrate them into existing databases (national, regional, local) such as the Oregon Forest Directory, Sustainable Woods Network, and Timber Buy/sell.com.
- Peer exchange on Post and Pole Manufacturing – We will host a demonstration and information exchange in the Northwest in June where Alliance members will share innovative post and pole value-added manufacturing techniques and explore the development of cross-regional business relationships.
- Host a Peer Learning Collaborative on Inventory Management – This fall we will host an Inventory Management Training for Small Wood Products Companies in the Southeast in conjunction with the Alliance’s 2008 planning meeting.
- Nurture relationships with Key Markets – Existing market relationship will be expanded to include offerings from and to diverse geographies, enabling the local sourcing of product from a centralized national source.
Much greater development of low-grade wood markets for biomass energy generation. (Effort by CFRC in western Wisconsin.)
Our wood markets have been terrible for the past several years.
More conferences and discussion, but I've seen few demonstration projects and not heard of much funding for same.
The Fuels for Schools and Beyond programs in Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and North Dakota, as well as efforts in Colorado, Alaska, Wyoming, and New Mexico are opening up eyes and markets for woody biomass utilization as a win-win for energy costs, carbon cycling, local economies, and national security.
It would be nice to have high grade and normal saw log markets. Low grader markets are almost too much to hope for.
Because of the number of hurricanes there is an abundant supply of low-grade timber but no markets have been found to market all of this biomass.
Bio mass boilers.
We've run into a wall with trying to market pulp.
A number of workshops have been held in MN or will be held on the increasing opportunities of using woody biomass for energy.
We are working on market maintenance and expansion through international market development and biomass energy and biochemical feedstock development.
Massachusetts Woodlands Coop working with affordable housing project to supply hemlock 2x4s and possibly hemlock trusses.
There has been a major buzz around cellulosic ethanol in the Pacific Northwest. Here is a very comprehensive Executive Summary to a 1,000 page study on the issue prepped for OR Forest Resource Int
Lots of talk about biofuels which might be useful. A group of loggers in Wisconsin recently formed a wood pellet plant.
Some work on biomass for fuel -- otherwise saw bolts and low grade saw logs are in ok demand. Pulp remains a problem in SW Wis. The fuel purchasers need to pay on a BTU basis. I think there would be more action if they would actually pay what it is worth!
This is a bad news strategy, from an ecological point of view, and the best possibility would be for it to have no effect.
Lots of talk about scrub materials that could be ingredients in bio-fuels. The technology needs to catch up with the growing interest in these alternative sources. While the technology is getting closer to commercialization, rural landowners need to be educated about the value of these lower-grade materials as ingredients for bio-fuels.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Renewable Portfolio Standards have the potential to create new investment in wood fueled electricity and cogeneration plants. The potential is yet to be proven, but the prospects are good.
The wood cooperative in Spring Green was a good example for use of locally abundant and less desirable species. It also demonstrated the ability to combine timbers sales from multiple properties to the benefit of all parties. The Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo is in part built from small diameter whole logs. This was an effort to use small logs structurally that otherwise would have been made into boards.
A lot of talk about biomass, but I have seen relatively little real action.
The U.S. Forest Products Lab located in Madison, Wisconsin, has done a lot of work to create uses for small diameter whole logs. For example, small diameter logs were used in the construction of the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center to create rafter pieces. This wood otherwise would have gone for pulp.
With the closing of several nearby mills, transportation economics for small diameter timber in our neck of the woods have gotten even worse; however this has created an opportunity for the local value added non profit to operate a locally sited sort yard and to offer landowners a purchase option for wood that would otherwise become firewood, slash or chips.
Oregon State University has started a new office called the Wood Innovation Center to respond to entrepreneurial requests at developing new markets, new products, etc.
Markets for lower grade materials and under utilized species is growing for lack of sufficient high grade. More interest seems to growing in these materials as customers are exposed to them.
Pulp and paper mills are moving to the South and the tropics. Wood chips are heating some schools and government buildings and generating electricity. Pellet us is expanding. We need more of both. As stated in #1, we need more research on bio-fuels, bio-power and bio-products to enable landowners to sell their low-grade wood.
Ontario -- Our FSC pulp is moving well. Low grade material is not harvested on private land. The loggers are after high grade sawlogs. The low grade is left for the landowner for fuelwood.
Development of Biomass Harvesting Guidelines in Minnesota (draft is currently out for public review): http://www.frc.state.mn.us/FMgdline/BHGC.html
Recent investments in this area are beginning to generate small benefits. Expecting increased investments and benefits in this area in 2007-08 - both small log processing and forest biomass utilization.
More and more effort in Oregon is being directed toward large and small bio-mass electric generation projects that will help clean up over stocked forest land that are fire hazards.
Fuel treatment contractors in Bend, OR and Twain Harte, CA utilize thinned material for value-added forest products.
Increased interest and promotion of woody biomass through US Forest Service biomass utilization grants (over $4 million in 2006 and soon to be announced for 2007). Also Fuels for Schools projects in MT have been successful in providing heating for schools by using wood.
Our wood markets have been terrible for the past several years.
More conferences and discussion, but I've seen few demonstration projects and not heard of much funding for same.
The Fuels for Schools and Beyond programs in Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and North Dakota, as well as efforts in Colorado, Alaska, Wyoming, and New Mexico are opening up eyes and markets for woody biomass utilization as a win-win for energy costs, carbon cycling, local economies, and national security.
It would be nice to have high grade and normal saw log markets. Low grader markets are almost too much to hope for.
Because of the number of hurricanes there is an abundant supply of low-grade timber but no markets have been found to market all of this biomass.
Bio mass boilers.
We've run into a wall with trying to market pulp.
A number of workshops have been held in MN or will be held on the increasing opportunities of using woody biomass for energy.
We are working on market maintenance and expansion through international market development and biomass energy and biochemical feedstock development.
Massachusetts Woodlands Coop working with affordable housing project to supply hemlock 2x4s and possibly hemlock trusses.
There has been a major buzz around cellulosic ethanol in the Pacific Northwest. Here is a very comprehensive Executive Summary to a 1,000 page study on the issue prepped for OR Forest Resource Int
Lots of talk about biofuels which might be useful. A group of loggers in Wisconsin recently formed a wood pellet plant.
Some work on biomass for fuel -- otherwise saw bolts and low grade saw logs are in ok demand. Pulp remains a problem in SW Wis. The fuel purchasers need to pay on a BTU basis. I think there would be more action if they would actually pay what it is worth!
This is a bad news strategy, from an ecological point of view, and the best possibility would be for it to have no effect.
Lots of talk about scrub materials that could be ingredients in bio-fuels. The technology needs to catch up with the growing interest in these alternative sources. While the technology is getting closer to commercialization, rural landowners need to be educated about the value of these lower-grade materials as ingredients for bio-fuels.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Renewable Portfolio Standards have the potential to create new investment in wood fueled electricity and cogeneration plants. The potential is yet to be proven, but the prospects are good.
The wood cooperative in Spring Green was a good example for use of locally abundant and less desirable species. It also demonstrated the ability to combine timbers sales from multiple properties to the benefit of all parties. The Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo is in part built from small diameter whole logs. This was an effort to use small logs structurally that otherwise would have been made into boards.
A lot of talk about biomass, but I have seen relatively little real action.
The U.S. Forest Products Lab located in Madison, Wisconsin, has done a lot of work to create uses for small diameter whole logs. For example, small diameter logs were used in the construction of the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center to create rafter pieces. This wood otherwise would have gone for pulp.
With the closing of several nearby mills, transportation economics for small diameter timber in our neck of the woods have gotten even worse; however this has created an opportunity for the local value added non profit to operate a locally sited sort yard and to offer landowners a purchase option for wood that would otherwise become firewood, slash or chips.
Oregon State University has started a new office called the Wood Innovation Center to respond to entrepreneurial requests at developing new markets, new products, etc.
Markets for lower grade materials and under utilized species is growing for lack of sufficient high grade. More interest seems to growing in these materials as customers are exposed to them.
Pulp and paper mills are moving to the South and the tropics. Wood chips are heating some schools and government buildings and generating electricity. Pellet us is expanding. We need more of both. As stated in #1, we need more research on bio-fuels, bio-power and bio-products to enable landowners to sell their low-grade wood.
Ontario -- Our FSC pulp is moving well. Low grade material is not harvested on private land. The loggers are after high grade sawlogs. The low grade is left for the landowner for fuelwood.
Development of Biomass Harvesting Guidelines in Minnesota (draft is currently out for public review): http://www.frc.state.mn.us/FMgdline/BHGC.html
Recent investments in this area are beginning to generate small benefits. Expecting increased investments and benefits in this area in 2007-08 - both small log processing and forest biomass utilization.
More and more effort in Oregon is being directed toward large and small bio-mass electric generation projects that will help clean up over stocked forest land that are fire hazards.
Fuel treatment contractors in Bend, OR and Twain Harte, CA utilize thinned material for value-added forest products.
Increased interest and promotion of woody biomass through US Forest Service biomass utilization grants (over $4 million in 2006 and soon to be announced for 2007). Also Fuels for Schools projects in MT have been successful in providing heating for schools by using wood.
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