A new chapter has opened for Ontario’s Haliburton Forest Group and Murray Bros. Lumber Company (MBLC), both manufacturers of hardwood and softwood lumber in the area known as Cottage Country north of Toronto and south of Algonquin Provincial Park.

In June 2024, they entered into a business partnership. For Haliburton, which is headquartered near the community of Haliburton, Ontario, the partnership with MBLC doubles their production capacity from about 100,000 board feet per shift to 200,000 board feet per shift. It also diversifies their product mix which was primarily rough green hardwood lumber.

About 50 per cent of MBLC’s production from their location in Madawaska, Ontario, two hours west of Ottawa, is softwood lumber derived from white pine, red pine, hemlock and white spruce. The rest is predominantly hard maple and aspen, with an added assortment of soft maple, red oak, beech, white birch, yellow birch and basswood, all common species in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest. About 50 per cent of their logs are harvested from within Algonquin Provincial Park using various silviculture systems, including selection and shelterwood.

In addition to a more diverse product mix, MBLC also offers Haliburton drying and dressing capacity, as it operates nine dry kilns and four planers.

In partnering with Murray Brothers Lumber, the Haliburton Forest Group has doubled its production capacity from 100,000 to 200,000 board feet per shift. Murray Brothers Lumber has over 120 employees at its sawmill with a considerable amount of manual labor employed because of the mix of both hardwood and softwood products they produce, and the amount of manual grading and sorting required as a result.

“We will be delving deeper into value-added,” says Malcolm Cockwell, Managing Director and President of the Haliburton Forest Group. “And there is a bit of a shift in product mix by way of species. We’ve been entirely hardwood focused—and now we are going to be more diversified.”

The focus for both companies going forward will be on producing high quality, value-added, finished wood products while looking for ways to maximize production potential by efficiently sharing wood resources amongst all of Haliburton’s sawmills.

“From the forest access and raw material availability side of the equation, it’s really a net positive for all the facilities that are in the group,” says Cockwell. “By integrating and working together, we’ll be able to swap logs between the facilities, and that is already happening.

“Every mill is set up differently and has different strengths and weaknesses with respect to the logs they are processing. So we are able to take a step further on that optimization path to line up the resources and send them to the right destination.”

Liam Murray, Mill Manager at MBLC, says a partnership with Haliburton was preferable because there are several family members, himself included, who are still interested in continuing within the business. But they understood the value and synergies possible, such as greater log access, in partnering with another entity active in the region, like the Haliburton Forest Group. Murray himself is the great grandson of one of the company founders.

About 50 per cent of the Murray Brothers Lumber production from their location in Madawaska, Ontario, two hours west of Ottawa, is softwood lumber derived from white pine, red pine, hemlock and white spruce. The rest is predominantly hard maple and aspen, with an added assortment of soft maple, red oak, beech, white birch, yellow birch and basswood.

He adds that on the management side, there are best practices and knowledge that can be shared across the group of companies. Sharing resources will certainly be a big benefit, and having a wide diversity of wood products shared across a bigger group should also result in quicker and easier response to current market demands.

To some extent, this partnership represents a marriage between the old and the new. MBLC has over 120 years of history working in the forest sector in Central Ontario, while the Haliburton Group, owned by Malcolm Cockwell and his colleagues, burst onto the scene about seven years ago with their purchase of the private Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Reserve Ltd. The purchase included a sawmill on the site.

Since then, Haliburton has added Huntsville Forest Products in Huntsville, Almaguin Forest Products in South River, Neuman Forest Products in Palmer Rapids, and now MBLC in Madawaska with the consummation of this partnership.

When they began, the company produced about 3.5 million board feet of lumber annually from the single Haliburton sawmill. Now, that volume will increase to 40 million board feet annually in just seven years.

MBLC brings considerable expertise to the partnership in producing and marketing finished wood products. Rough green material from Haliburton is already making its way to the MBLC mill. It is also continuing its long-term relationships with various logging contractors which can’t be understated, says Cockwell, as the entire region is suffering from a lack of experienced logging contractors.

“Over time, I expect that we will see quite a bit of wood moving among the facilities, both in terms of raw materials and also in terms of lumber,” says Cockwell. “The dry kiln and dressing capacity at Murray Bros. is significant. The general objective going forward is to keep the kilns working in a manner that is generating margin, and that historically is how Murray Bros. has been operated.”

The brothers Mick and Tom Murray founded M & T Lumber Company in 1902 by purchasing property and operating a number of logging camps in the vicinity of the community of Barry’s Bay. That lead to the establishment of a sawmill with a partner, but then that partnership dissolved as a consequence of the onset of the Great Depression.

Undaunted, the brothers founded Murray Bros. Lumber Company in 1929, south of Madawaska in the Cross Lake area, and moved to a permanent location with a more modern sawmill on the banks of the Madawaska River in 1951.

Murray Brothers Lumber has come a long way since the founders established the company in Ontario’s Cottage Country 120 years ago, with several upgrades along the way to this two-line sawmill, which is a major local employer both in the sawmill and in the woods in the region.

Earlier on, Tom Murray entered provincial politics, which resulted in him spending most of his time in that endeavor while the business carried on. Several waves of modernization occurred, resulting in the lumber manufacturing business that MBLC is today, providing employment for 120 workers in mill operations and about the same number of jobs among contractors who supply the mill.

The MBLC sawmill consists of a large log mill and a small log mill, with the break point being about 10” in diameter. On the large log line, which was commissioned in 1972, the logs first encounter a Morbark Rosserhead debarker, leading to one of two double-cut bandmill carriages. One bandmill is a Cleereman Industries bandmill with USNR setworks. The second bandmill is from TS Manufacturing, with Silvatech setworks. The bandmills produce either timbers or boards that progress along the green chain. The lumber is able to be diverted into a vertical band resaw provided by a company called Truway Machinery Manufacturers, headquartered in nearby Combermere, Ontario. The lumber then encounters one of two board edgers and ‘Canadian style’ trimmers, before progressing down a boardway where it is graded and manually stacked.

The small log scragg mill was constructed in 1985. There is a Morbark Rosserhead debarker and a Forano ring debarker on the front end leading to a twin scragg mill manufactured by North American Sawmills Machinery, headquartered in Killaloe, Ontario. The company also provided a horizontal resaw. The lumber is processed through two board edgers and two trimmers before being graded and manually stacked on the boardway.

Lumber destined for the dry kilns is then transported to a separate building where it is manually graded and then sent to the 14-bin or 20-bin Truway sorters. Their softwood products are dried primarily in one of four North Carolina-based, SII-brand dry kilns. The remaining five dry kilns which predominately dry their hardwood products were provided by Coe Manufacturing, which is now part of USNR.

Dried and sorted lumber is either shipped directly to customers or sent to one of two planer mills. Murray Bros. has been planing lumber since the 1950’s. The planer mills contain four A20 Yates planers, leading to a Truway trimmer in one planer mill or a North American Machinery trimmer in the other. Finally, the lumber is manually stacked in preparation for shipping.

A Cleereman carriage is the main breakdown unit on one of two production lines operating at Murray Brothers Lumber. The mill produces a variety of both hardwood and softwood products common to the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Forest. About 50 per cent of their logs are harvested from within Algonquin Provincial Park using various silviculture systems, including selection and shelterwood.

One common thread that supports the marriage between Haliburton Forest Group and MBLC is that both companies have a strong commitment to sustainable forest management, considering how much logging MBLC conducts in Algonquin Park.

“I’m very proud that logging has been such a big part of the history of Algonquin Park,” says Liam Murray, a Registered Professional Forester. “I believe that it is a leader certainly in Ontario and around the world in terms of stewardship and managing for all sorts of different values.”

All of Haliburton’s private forest holdings are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. Owning and operating the recreational Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Reserve Ltd property, as well as a number of other private forest properties throughout Ontario, has strongly influenced how Malcolm Cockwell and his brother, Gareth, both Registered Professional Foresters, approach sustainable forest management. MBLC has also held FSC certification, an indicator of the value that the company has placed on going above and beyond government requirements when it comes to stewardship.

With its deal to partner with MBLC concluded, Haliburton Forest Group is now changing focus.

“It’s been pretty rapid growth,” says Cockwell. “Something that we will be embracing for the next while—as a group—is a transition from growth to improvement. It’s now time to concentrate on becoming more efficient by centralizing some operational functions and that also probably will entail some major capital projects in the sawmills.”

They are also in the process of ramping up their engineered biochar phase one expansion project. It is located near the village of Haliburton and is about to enter phase two of its expansion. The plant converts wood residues like wood chips and bark into very high quality biochar that can be used as a fossil fuel-based product replacement in many industrial
processes.