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Yakama and Comact together for a turnkey project !
The Yakama Nation takes advantage of technology and trends
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Build a new state-of-the-art sawmill, fuel it with a steady supply of logs, then furnish good jobs to the local workforce. While western timber workers have marinated for years in the bad news of mill closures and dwindling log supplies, the Yakama Nation has broken out of the mold, constructing not just one new mill, but two. The Washington-based tribe shoots for 200 million boards feet of value-added, high quality lumber annually off its 300,000 acres of designated commercial timberlands.
Mills bit and small
''We built the large log mill to take advantage of all the large logs available off Yakama lands,'' says Edwards of the privately owned timberlands, which have never been clear-cut. ''We also get all the small-diameter timber off our own lands, which run from here to the base of Mount Adams. |
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We run entierly on sustained yield, and with 120 to 140 million board feet produced annually, the land could be logged forever.'' The 90-acre double mill site, 125 miles east of Seattle,bustles with activity.
The facility, complete with a mezzanine for officed, handles 70 percent of the harvest, cutting logs from 12 to 44 inches in diameter, in length up to 20 feet. Edwards singles out the Comact CETEC 7-foot single-cut head rig band mill, along with the Comact CETEC 6-foot tri-band horizontal resaw, as the mill's basic workhorses. Because the mill was built as a Comact turnkey operation, the Canadian-manufacturer's designs make up much of the equipment roster (Hi-Tech Comact is based in Arkansas and works cooperatively with Comact in Canada). ''We had plenty of meetings with people on the ground and a team from our small-diameter mill helped design the new mill,'' Edwards explains, reserving his highest praise for mill manager Tim Lockey. ''Tim knows how to make a sawmill run. He's a great listener and he empowers people and gives them the tools to do the job.''
The Comact technical crew also rates an A-plus for fine-tuning the whole mill, staying around to troubleshoot until production ran smoothly, Edwards says.
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Source:
Barbara Coyner
Timber West
May/June 2003 |
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