March 2002 Volume 8, Number 3
March 2002 Volume 8, Number 3
By Jack Petree
Contributing Editor
LAKEVIEW, Oregon — The Collins Companies, a group of inter-related forest industry businesses that includes several processing plants, a small chain of lumber yards and substantial forest land holdings, has garnered high praise from major environmental groups in recent years for its progressive business practices.
The companies have earned the plaudits because of the strong conservation ethic that was in place at Collins decades before most of the major environmental groups were even founded.
| ..the Fremont plant exemplifies the Collins commitment to conservation.. |
The company has won kudos for highly visible efforts, like management of its 94,000-acre Collins Almanor Forest in California’s northern Sierras. It also has quietly addressed the sustainability of forest resources by improving yield through upgrades of company sawmills, such as the one Kerry manages at Fremont.
Recent improvements to one mill were centered around three Inovec optimization systems. They are an example of how plant improvements, while less visible than some other efforts, not only improve a company’s profitability but also significantly conserve natural resources, noted Kerry.
In just three years the Collins Companies will celebrate 150 years as a family-owned business. While being one of the forest products industry’s oldest, continuously operated businesses, the company is also widely recognized as one of the industry’s most progressive. The Collins Companies was the first privately held forest products company in the U.S. to be comprehensively evaluated and certified by Scientific Certifications Systems in accordance with the requirements of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Today, all three of the company’s major forests (the Collins Pennsylvania Forest, the Collins Lakeview Forest, and the Collins Almanor Forest) are certified by the FSC. In addition, the company participates in the ‘Natural Step’ program and the Wildlife Fund’s Climate Savers initiative. Its environmental ethic has earned it many awards through the years, including the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development and the Green Cross Millennium Award.
As a prime example of how Collins addresses sustainability from the forestry end of its operations, the company points to its Collins Almanor Forest. The forest has been operated on modern principles of sustainability since 1940, nearly half a century before the concept became popularized. Last year the company harvested its 2 billionth board foot of lumber from the forest — a 126-year old ponderosa pine. What made the event remarkable was that in 1941, when the company harvested its first log from the tract, the forest contained 1.5 billion board feet of standing inventory — the same volume of lumber it contains now. Equally remarkable is that the forest is not an even-aged plantation, as might be expected. Rather, it is "a bio-diverse, multi-layered, canopied, self-sustaining forest supporting great blue heron rookeries, black bears, rubber boas, bald eagles, and naturally healthy meadows, streams, rivers, and a lake."
On the processing side, operations like the Fremont plant also
exemplify the Collins commitment to conservation. At Lakeview, a small community in south-central Oregon, the Fremont
mill produces about 60 million board feet annually. It saws mostly ponderosa pine (80%) and white fir (most of
the remaining 20%) with a few other species sometimes coming in as part of the mix. The product mix consists mostly
4-quarter and 6-quarter common pine, 2-inch-quarter dimensional pine and fir, and 6-quarter pine industrials (shop
and molding grades). About 25% of the fiber processed at the mill comes from 80,000 acres of company land located
nearby in three major parcels. The remainder comes from public and private land — mostly private land these days.
The corporate focus on conservation is always at the forefront of decisions that have to do with managing the Fremont mill. To improve the mill’s operations and make gains in conservation, the plant was upgraded in 2001. The entire mill was revamped in order to enhance sustainability of the company’s forest lands, improve recovery of the resource, increase the value of the lumber produced, and add productivity.
Productivity and value are as vital to environmental gains as sustainability and recovery, Kerry noted, because a mill that is not competitive and profitable won’t be open long. A company cannot do as much to improve the environment if its operations are hobbled by poor profitability.
The heart of the upgrade at the Fremont mill was an optimized edger/gang system using Inovec CantMaster and Inovec WaneMaster optimization technology to improve both yield and productivity. Simultaneously, the head rig carriage was optimized with Inovec’s StereoScan™ 3D scanning technology to maximize recovery of high-value material from every log. The results have been "impressive," said Kerry.
the story continues...
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