BC’s Seaton Forest Products Finds Niche Market for Dry Grade 4 Wood

Seaton Forest Products, located near Smithers, B.C. at the foot of Seaton Mountain, has been quietly building a niche market for itself. Owned by Andy Thompson, the mill cuts dry Grade 4 wood into cants, using wood that would have typically been left in the bush or burned. As the B.C. Interior forest industry grapples with a decreasing fiber supply, Thompson hopes to continue building on this niche to expand their offerings. Thompson has a partner in the mill, Kirsteen Laing, a registered professional forester who had started a forestry consulting firm in 1985 but was looking for a new way to get involved in the industry. Construction on the mill site began in June 2015 and production started a year later. The mill is designed to process 80,000 cubic meters of dry Grade 4 wood, mainly balsam, per year. The fiber comes from the licensees in the region, such as West Fraser and Canfor, as well as from woodlots, community forests and BC Timber Sales. Thompson explains that deciding to use the Grade 4 decadent wood was a no-brainer for the company. “If you try to get the green wood and compete with the other mills, you wouldn’t have much success. But nobody wanted the dry Grade 4 wood, so it was easier to get.” Thompson and Laing realized there was a market for cants made from this fiber. Their biggest market is China, where they use the cants for construction, crating, and pallets. There’s also a market in Alberta and B.C. to use the cants for pipe skids in the construction of pipelines. Since the mill began operating in 2016, the available fiber supply in B.C. has changed dramatically as the province transitions away from harvesting mountain pine beetle-killed stands. On top of that, the province’s wood pellet industry is growing, and Pinnacle Renewable Energy recently built a plant in Smithers. As a result, Seaton Forest Products is facing tough competition for fiber. Thompson said, “Pinnacle uses the same type of fiber we use — the decadent and dry kind of wood. So, the lines are blurred sometimes as to what goes there and what comes to our place.”