ALANA TOULIN
08/14/2008

Dr. Mathew Leitch believes the future of Ontario‘s forest industry lies in smaller-scale technology and production.

The professor of wood science and forest products is following up on his belief with some hands-on teaching on the subject at a log mill recently established in front of Lakehead‘s Hangar sports facility.

“Portable milling technology is part of my research program,” he said. His forestry students first learn about it in class and then will get a chance to come to the site and practise milling up logs, making for a valuable range of skills gained.
If the troubled forestry industry wants to succeed, it has to look towards value-added products and beyond the use of traditional stationary mills, Leitch said.

“The idea is to get lots of small manufacturers making value-added products that are worth more, so we‘re not so reliant on our primary producers,” he said. “As I‘m sure you‘re aware, they are taking a bit of a thumping right now.”
Portable milling technologies can be especially beneficial to remote communities, he said.

“Northern reserves and communities that want to get into value-adding can use this type of equipment to saw their own wood or produce products with it rather than having to go down the road of putting in stationary mills, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “Everything you see here on site, you can get for under $60,000.”

The technology also produces less waste than a larger mill, he said. The cedar logs piled up are salvaged from an area near Atikokan and were going to be left in the bush because they contain defects like spirals and bends.

“Almost any big mill couldn‘t process this,” said Scot Rubin, who is about to start his fourth year in the forestry program and conducted a thesis study on lumber recovery rates in differently sized mills. “With a small machine like this, you can go and work around all of the defects.”

Leitch echoed Rubin‘s sentiment, saying that bigger mills aren‘t set up to do the type of work being done at the Lakehead site.

“The stuff (large mills) are chipping, we‘re sawing beautiful dimensional lumber out of it,” he said.