SEPTEMBER 2023
Cover: Blanca Finds Its Groove
BLANCA, Colorado – Located in the remote San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, Blanca Forestry Products is truly a different kind of sawmill, built seven years ago to support wildfire mitigation efforts on the largest ranch in the state.
Inside This Issue
THE ISSUES: Lights, Camera Nashville!
Unlike my dear old boss Rich Donnell, I did not grow up in Nashville. When the Southern Forest Products Association announced the move from my beloved hometown of Atlanta, Georgia for its first Forest Products Machinery & Equipment EXPO I was less than enthusiastic about hitting “Nashvegas” in August. But I get it. Atlanta is not a highly walkable city anymore and the Georgia World Congress Center could definitely use a coat of paint.
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Editor, Timber Processing
NEWSfeed
- Forecast Calls For Slow Movement
- New Duties Revealed On Lumber Imports
- Minnesota Passes Wider Load Rule
- ALC-Idaho Rolls Out Medical Plan
- NWH Purchases Post Hardwoods
- BID Is Acquiring Saws/Tooling Firm
- Boise Cascade Buys BROSCO
- Japan Paper Mills Look To Nanofiber
- Atlas Engineered Products Purchases Truss Producer
DOWNSTREAM
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following companies submitted editorial profiles to complement their advertisements in Timber Processing September 2023.
- BID Group
- Cleereman Industries
- Cone Omega
- GF Smith
- Lico
- LIMAB
- LMI Technologies
- McDonough Manufacturing Co.
- Mellott
- Progress Engineering
- Real Performance Machinery
- Carbotech (Autolog)
Sawmillers Show Up
NASHVILLE, Tennessee – After six shows in Atlanta, Georgia dating back to 2011, the Southern Forest Products Association, host of the biennial Forest Products Machinery & Equipment EXPO, decided to move the 37th edition to Nashville, Tennessee. Held August 23-25, this was an exciting change for exhibitors and attendees alike—the Music City Center was in the heart of the city, allowing everyone the chance to not only walk from the variety of hotels and top-notch restaurants to the show floor but also enjoy all that Nashville has to offer by way of its world-famous music scene.
Editors Jessica Johnson, Dan Shell and Jacqlyn Kirkland contributed to this coverage.
MACHINERY ROW
- Glulam, CLT Projects Bring In Minda
- Lashway Enhances Drying Operation
- Apprenticeship Program Starts Up At BID Group
- Taylor Presents 50,000th Machine
PRODUCT SCANNER 10
- ARC Pusher
AT LARGE
- RoyOMartin Employees Better Themselves
- Lumber Quality Workshops Announced
- Maine Virtual Course Wants New Workers
- Late Auburn Coach Leaves Land Gift
- Core Industries Plans Facility For Pellets Handling
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Blanca Finds Its Groove
Article by Dan Shell, Senior Editor, Timber Processing
BLANCA, Colorado – Located in the remote San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, Blanca Forestry Products is truly a different kind of sawmill, built seven years ago to support wildfire mitigation efforts on the largest ranch in the state. But to do so most effectively, the mill has also grown to utilize additional log sources and increased production that makes the facility more readily available to handle the timber off the ranch, says General Manager Rick Engebretsen, who joined the Blanca Forestry Products team in 2020. He has an extensive background in the industry, mostly on the hardwood side with stints at Northwest Hardwoods and Collins Companies’ Kane Hardwood operation.
The mill was established to help boost the local economy and provide an outlet for thinning material coming off the Trinchera Blanca Ranch, the largest private holding in Colorado at 172,000 acres that includes more than 90,000 forested acres.
In 2007, ranch managers had just begun developing and implementing wildfire mitigation strategies on the ranch, which had suffered a 14,000 acre forest fire in 2006. But the environmentally significant ranch—a Rocky Mountains gem that includes several 14,000 ft. peaks in southern Colorado—had been suffering from forest health issues.
Overstocked forests created well-meaning fire suppression policies have been ripe for stress and pests as prolonged drought and insect infestation from spruce budworms and bark beetles have left Colorado timberlands extremely vulnerable to wildfire. The spruce budworm has been especially devastating, turning whole high elevation mountainsides into thousands of acres of standing dead timber.
Yet efforts to directly employ forest health improvements on the ranch were hampered by a lack of local timber processing outlets and facilities that limited annual harvests top around 500 acres annually, according to some reports. Ranch managers did as best they could, but the effort didn’t get a big push until almost a decade later.
In 2015, ranch ownership formed Blanca Forestry Products, a strategic move to develop the ranch’s own processing capability to utilize timber from its forest health improvement activities. From the start, the arrangement would be different than most sawmills have with their wood baskets: In this case, the sawmill was built to serve the forest, not the other way around. After groundbreaking and construction in 2016, the new mill received its first logs and started up in February 2017.
Hurst boiler runs off residuals from the mill.
Blanca Forestry Products lumber it marketed heavily in Colorado and sold all over with WWPA certification.
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