BC Government Funding Helps Company Convert Damaged Trees Into Engineered Wood Products

With funding provided through the Indigenous Forest Bioeconomy Program, the BC provincial government has made funds available to Deadwood Innovations, a joint venture with the Nak’azdli Whut’en First Nation. Over the past two years, Deadwood Innovations has received $200,000 (CAD) to support the creation of jobs in rural communities and to accelerate Indigenous participation in the forest sector.

Deadwood Innovations converts trees damaged by mountain pine beetles and other elements and turns them into value-added engineered wood products. Deadwood Innovations has used the provincial funding to assess, engineer, procure, and build a pilot-scale manufacturing plant at the site of the former Tl’Oh Forest Products mill in Fort St. James.

The province is working closely with Deadwood Innovations to finalize new funding so it can commercially produce engineered wood products in its facility through the new accelerator stream of the Indigenous Forest Bioeconomy Program. The plant design is scheduled to start in September 2022.

Deadwood Innovation’s facility will process low-quality, damaged, and underutilized fiber into value-added engineered wood products. Its technology is creating new market opportunities by producing engineered wood products that can be customized to meet specifications for industrial wood products and solid biomass fuels. The use of forest waste decreases the need for slash pile burning, reducing carbon emissions.