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Terrace Review —— Wednesday, November 27, 1991 3

Skeena Cellulose —

— Continued from page 1

19 in Brussels in an effort to get
the ban extended by one year,
but failed to get the item on the
table. The EEC group meets
again Dec. 17 and may consider
the extension appeal. As it
stands, Menhinick said, wood
that has documents and is cer-
tified as of Dec. 31 will be
allowed in, but it has to be
shipped and landed by Feb. 29.

Menhinick says the company is
now kiln drying as much Jumber
as the kilns can handle, "We
have made the decision to kiln
dry, regardless. We may back up
on that, but we’re not going to
gamble, That’s the way the
market’s been going." The last
shipment of green lumber, he
said, goes out Dec. 2.

The kilns are natural gas-fired,
a type known as direct fire gas
kilns. In rebuilding them, SCI
restored the large buildings
structurally and installed a set of
sensors called "probes" that feed
data into a computer network
which controls the speed and
duration of drying. Hemlock,
which accounts for most of the
mill’s production, goes into the
kilns at about 25 percent mois-
ture and comes out at exactly 17
percent. Again, Menhinick is
thankful the mill doesn’t get its
logs by water. "They can go up
to 100 percent moisture," he
said. The cost of drying lumber
made from logs that are towed in
booms from the logging site can

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be horrendous.

The computerized controlling

system also preserves quality,
drying the lumber at a rate slow
and even enough to prevent
checking and cracking. Men-
hinick says the flow in the mill
will have to be reworked to
create "charges" — single kiln
loads, about 175,000 board feet
— of uniform species, length
and thickness.

The kiln drying will add to the
cost of production, but it also
results in a premium product.
Kiln-dried lumber has an aver-
age value about $70 per thou-
sand board feet higher than
green lumber, but Reg Lightfoot,
a senior SCI official in
Vancouver, says hasn’t yet hit
on a pricing formula for it.

Menhinick says North Ameri-
can producers are going to have

something of an advantage over
other competitors in the BEC
market because the cost of
energy and real estate is rela-
tively low here. And Skeena
Cellulose is in a pretty good
position among North american
producers because it already has
the driers. "We’d have one hell
of time getting the capital if
these weren’t already here,"
Menhinick says. "Custom kiln
driers in the lower mainland are
booked to the hilt.

"We’re in as good a shape as

any cd coastal mill I know of."
- om Ap ms

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