Massive Project: “”Plans are firming up for construction of the Mass Timber Company plant in East Hants, N.S….”
A one page article in Atlantic Forestry Review July 2024, page 27 provides a few details about what will be the first Mass Timber Manufacturing plant east of Quebec
– “Plans are firming up for construction of the Mass Timber Company plant in East Hants, N.S….The $250 million dollar plant is expected to consume about 43 million board feet of lumber per year. The thing that’s quite unique about this is that we are sawmill-integrated.” Crabbe said. “In every other part of Canada, specifically on te West Coast, and in the U.S., yu can actully buy lam-stock or mass-timber feedstock on the open market, to manufacture mass-timber products. But here in Atlantic Canada, you can’t do that, because there isn’t necessarily a manufacturing market.. So the greatest achievement of all is that we have partnered with Elmsdale Lumber and Ledwidge Lumber, and we’re using their inputs”…This is a good fit, he added, because Ledwidge is a stud mill, while Elmsdale, just five kilometers up the road, is a random-length mill that specializes in sawing larger-diameter logs. “So through our integrated strategy, we’re using the entire tree.”
– On the “strength characteristics of this region’s softwood“: “The mass timber movement evolved on the West Coast largely because of the purported superiority of Douglas fir for structural applications, and this assumption has rarely been challenged.”The lumber quality in Eastern Canada has always been perceived as crap” he [Patrick Crabbe] said… anyway. we put that to the test. We took around 10,000 pieces of wood to the University of New Brunswick’s Wood Science Technology Centre…what we found was absolutely astounding. We have very strong material here, and the fibre basket is very healthy…We have found a way to use our Eastern SPF [presumably Spruce, Pine, Fir] to compete with Douglas fir.”
Re: 43 million board feet
Ledwidge Lumber “The commitment of Ledwidge to innovation and market development has led to another joint effort toward value add manufacturing, with Elmsdale Lumber Company, to build a mass timber manufacturing plant. Elmsdale is a long lumber mill, located just a few kilometres up the TransCanada highway from Enfield…Current annual mill production is closing in on 75 million board feet annually. Lumber is marketed about 30 per cent domestic and 70 per cent export, primarily into the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Lumber is brokered through Eacan Timber.”
Elmsdale: “We operate a single shift from Monday to Friday and produce approximately 30 million board feet of spruce lumber annually, which includes a very small volume of hemlock lumber.”
Note: “Elmsdale Lumber, which produces 30 million board feet of lumber annually, requires approximately 120,000 tonnes of wood a year. Roughly 35 to 40 percent (42,000-48,000 tonnes) of that ends up as chips, and at a mill price of $60/tonne it will generate between $2.5 and $2.9 million in revenues. Roughly 35 to 40 percent (42,000-48,000 tonnes) of that ends up as chips, and at a mill price of $60/tonne it will generate between $2.5 and $2.9 million in revenues. If that chip market is lost and the mill is forced to “dump” valuable chips into a biomass market, the mill price can drop to $16/tonne or lower, which represents a $2 million annual operating loss…” – AFR March 2020
In 2020, total lumber production in NS was 431,995,993 board feet; 5 of 107 businesses produced over 10,000,000 board feet which was 89.89% of total provincial production.- Registry-of-Buyers-2020.pdf
MORE ON MASS TIMBER
Could Nova Scotia-produced Mass Timber reduce our housing shortage AND save our Old Forests? 7Jan2024
Post by david p on versicolor.ca/nstriad on Jan 7, 2024 Also available as a PDF SUMMARY The first Mass Timber manufacturing facility east of Quebec is due to begin production in Hants Co., N.S. in 2026 and could supply as much as 1/4 of the housing supply in NS by the end the decade. Can it be matched up with innovative forest managements practices introduced following the Forest Practices Review (2017-2018) to ensure truly sustainable wood production and protection of our Old Forests? Ans: In principle, Yes… but in practice there has been little if any serious attention given to what is required to ensure that happens, certainly nothing in the public domain.
Also View Mass Timber and subpages on versicolor.ca/nstriad.