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The sound of a well-running sawmill is sweet music to shift charge hand Roy Betts. It means the upgrades at the Tolko Industries mill in Williams Lake, British Columbia are delivering their intended benefits,.

Upping lumber recovery at Lakeview

Tolko Industries’ Lakeview Lumber Division in Williams Lake, B.C., has recently seen some significant upgrades that are already delivering results in lumber productivity and recovery.

By Jim Stirling

When a sawmill is running well, it just sounds right. It’s an intuitive sort of thing. The Lakeview sawmill is sounding better all the time.

It’s sweet music now to shift charge hand Roy Betts. It means the upgrades to the Tolko Industries mill in Williams Lake, British Columbia are delivering their intended benefits. Betts well understands the mill’s rhythms. He’s been patrolling the catwalks there since Lignum ran the operation in the mid-1970s.

Betts’ ears aren’t deceiving him.

“The upgrades have helped out our lumber recovery and our productivity,” confirms Ryan Oliver, plant manager for Tolko’s Lakeview Lumber Division.”We’re up about 15 to 20 points with our lumber recovery.”

The focus for a comprehensive range of upgrades in 2014 was rebuilding the sawmill’s back end, explains Oliver. “We have three breakdown lines feeding a single sorter. We were a back-end constrained mill.”

Lakeview can process logs from four inch diameters to 26 inches on its three breakdown lines: a headrig side, a 10 inch canter line and an eight inch canter line.

The rebuilt back-end begins with a new unscrambler and lug loading system from Comact. Boards are delivered to an Autolog trimmer-optimizer—with options for remanufacturing—before passing through a Carbotech International fence and multi-saw trimmer.

Mill Tech Industries manufactured the pusher type log sorter, including adding 20 bins (to a total of 88). Operational speed has also been improved with the Mill Tech sorter running easily at 155 lugs/minute compared with around 118 lugs under the old system.

Other new equipment installed in the upgrade includes an electric dual fork stacker and auto strip system both supplied by Carbotech. AMS Controls provide sequencing for the mill’s upgraded back-end.

The sophistication of the new equipment installed in the Lakeview sawmill plays an essential role in the mill’s ability to improve the overall operation’s lumber recovery factor. Autolog’s trimmer-optimizer illustrates the point. “It provides the technology for us to see heavy shade in an individual board,” explains Oliver. “The laser scanning density is so tight you can clearly see the shadowing on the cracks. We can change the trimming parameters for that piece accordingly to increase recovery.”

It’s been a long and painful period that’s felled many an operation along the way but the worst of the mountain pine beetle epidemic has passed. The percentages of green wood coming across Lakeview’s scales is slowly increasing. Beetle killed wood now comprises about 40 per cent of the mill’s diet with the balance in Douglas fir, spruce and balsam.

The shift is showing up in longer kiln drying schedules and improved grade outturns, notes Oliver. The development of the Chinese market and its sustained appetite for generally lower grade defect-prone beetle killed wood came at the right time for Lakeview, along with other mills in the B.C. Interior.

One of the other operations to benefit from processing beetle wood during the U.S. market slowdown is a neighbour in Williams Lake. Lakeview forwards blocks from its milling operations to Parallel Wood Products Ltd, where they are finger-jointed into studs.

Tolko’s project priority last year was eradicating Lakeview’s back-end bottleneck. However, the primary breakdown process was not ignored with comprehensive changes made to the mill’s headrig. The project involved having USNR upgrade all the headrig’s controls, incorporate laser scanning and switching drives from DC to AC. “We’re expecting a 25 point recovery impact on that line,” anticipates Oliver. The revamped headrig had only been operational a couple of weeks when LSJ visited but the project will prove a great success if early experience proves permanent. “We’re still fine-tuning the controls but the headrig has been excellent.”

The upgrades have helped Tolko Lakeview Lumber Division's lumber recovery and its productivity. The mill is up about 15 to 20 points with its lumber recovery.

A high degree of automation comes with the mill’s new back-end equipment. But the impact on the mill’s work force “has been very minimal,” reports Oliver. “No one lost their jobs and we’ve continued to hire new employees.” That constitutes an extra plus for the Williams Lake job market pool especially during a time when the regional mining industry is throttling back.

The mill’s new equipment, especially surrounding the trimmer-optimizer, allowed Lakeview to further upgrade its sawdust control and mitigation strategies. One of the direct control impacts is the hiring of two full time tradesmen, each working 40 hours a week. Oliver says the clean-up supervisor prioritizes projects and generates work orders. “It’s working well and we’re seeing improvements,” reports Oliver “It’s an old mill and it isn’t easy to keep it in compliance but increasing the labour is achieving that. Everything in the mill these days is influenced by dust control and will continue to be.”

The rebuilt back-end begins with a new unscrambler and lug loading system from Comact. Boards are delivered to an Autolog trimmer-optimizer (pictured), with options for remanufacturing, before passing through a Carbotech International fence and multi-saw trimmer.

The Lakeview Lumber Division is coming off a very busy 2014 and one with significant capital investment. Tolko is a private, Canadian owned forest products company and is not obliged to divulge any dollar figures attached to its projects.

”I can say that last year the investment in Cariboo region mills was more than in the rest of the company,” says Oliver. The total includes significant improvements to the planer mill at Tolko’s Soda Creek Division, its sister mill in Williams Lake. The investment represents a corporate decision that speaks volumes for Tolko’s regional commitment to the Cariboo.

The sound of a well-running sawmill is sweet music to shift charge hand Roy Betts. It means the upgrades at the Tolko Industries mill in Williams Lake, British Columbia are delivering their intended benefits.