Spruce Products Ltd. Goes With Valutec TC Continuous Kiln

At a time when low-cost mass production and solutions are the norm, it’s worth remembering why custom products from specialized companies will always have their place. When sawmill plant manager Rod Pidskalny and the team at Spruce Products Ltd. (SPL) in Swan River, Manitoba, Canada, went looking to replace two aging batch kilns they were keen to explore continuous dry kiln technology. 

The SPL team soon ruled out traditional CDKs without door closures, fearing they would lose efficiency. Six months of designing a solution with Valutec landed them with a stainless steel TC continuous kiln with eight drying zones that can handle 60MMBF annually—well over their mill’s current demands. “We can now dry everything we can produce, plus we’ve got capacity built in with the kilns to dry a little more. We have some future expansion possible,” Pidskalny says, adding, “It’s been performing very well. We were looking for a 2.5% uplift in grade outturn, that was our goal, and we’ve actually met that. We think it’s a little higher than that.”

Beyond grade outturn, Pidskalny says they’ve noticed a significant decrease in drying defects, which has directly benefited their planer operations. They’ve seen fewer planer jams, cross-ups at the lug loader and generally smoother runs, particularly with 2x4s.

Valutec is the only company offering TC kiln—a kiln type that comes with distinguishing features such as low energy consumption, high flexibility and superior capacity. It gives the operator the possibility to create the ultimate drying process with freedom to mix dimensions, minimal moisture content variation and reduced risk of checking. Annual capacity can reach 150MMBF with target moisture contents down to around 12-18% with a standard deviation of 1%. The principle is based on the timber package being fed lengthwise through zones in which the air circulates laterally across the drying channel. This enables the separate regulation of the climate in different zones according to a schedule that comes very close to the ideal schedule of a batch kiln.

ICT was originally established in 1978 as an offshoot of the Langdale Co., but has since expanded and diversified to become a regional leader in cutting solutions.