Willamette Industries Inc.: resource conservation & energy efficiencies.

The future success of Willamette Ind. depends on its ability to convert one of Earth's greatest and most abundant natural resources -- trees -- into products that meet basic human needs.

Controversy over the stewardship of trees frequently obscures the underlying truth about building products

It goes without saying that it has always been in Willamette's best interest to manage wisely the resource, maximize use of the raw material and convert efficiently raw material into finished product. After all, that's how the company stays in business.

Natural resource management

Willamette owns or controls more than 1.2 million acres of timberland, which supplies about 40 percent of its current long-term timber needs. This means Willamette needs less timber from federal lands to meet its customers' demands.

The growth and harvest of this timber are managed by a team of Willamette foresters and biologists. Willamette also operates several technologically advanced tree farms in the West and in the South, where efforts are continuing to produce healthy, disease-resistant strains of fir and pine.

To ensure its long-term supply, Willamette replants five trees for every one it harvests. These new, young stands of forest provide important habitat for an abundant array of wildlife, and Willamette's biologists continually monitor the health of these stands from planting until harvest.

Reduced reliance on old-growth timber

Years ago, Willamette recognized that the diminishing availability of old growth, or mature, timber would seriously affect its operations.

Aggressive investment was made in two key areas -- Engineered Wood Products and mill modernization -- to reduce the need for old-growth timber.

In 1991 Willamette acquired three laminated beam plants from Bohemia Inc., making Willamette the largest U.S. producer of glulams.

These laminated beams, marketed under the name Bohemia Glulam, offer the spans and strength characteristics of old-growth beams, but are made completely from second-growth timber resources. In many ways, Glulams outperform beams made from old growth because the laminating process disperses the natural lumber defects and places the higher grade laminations in zones that receive the greatest stresses, resulting in a strong and dimensionally stable beam.

A similar process is used to produce Struc-Lam (laminated veneer flanges with OSB or plywood webs), which are used in residential and commercial construction. Like Glulam, these products offer the spans previously available only from old-growth timber, with the added benefits of greater dimensional stability and uniformity.

On the lumber and plywood side, Willamette has modernized its mills and plants to maximize the potential of each log. The Dallas, Ore., sawmill was recently retooled to produce efficiently top quality lumber from second-growth timber. This involved the addition of all new equipment, resulting in lumber products with greater consistency, precision and appearance -- all from second-growth timber.

Alternative product technology

Willamette built one of the first particle-board plants -- Duraflake in Albany, Ore. -- as a way to reclaim wood waste in the form of a marketable product. Initially manufactured for low-end, construction-related uses such as underlayment, composite panels today are heavily used in the cabinet and furniture industries for their design and manufacturing flexibility.

This shift from low-end to high-end uses has been driven by technological improvements to the product. As a result, composite panels now frequently outperform solid wood in many applications at more economical costs. This conserves solid wood resources for those applications for which there is no alternative to solid wood.

Willamette has been a leader in technological advancements in particleboard and MDF manufacturing. They pioneered fire resistant and electron-beam cured particleboards (Duraflake FR and KorTron/EB) for architectural and case goods uses.

The SurePine, Lillie and Duraflake particleboard plants were all modernized within the last three years and now produce a product with improved edge machining and surface finishing qualities for use in cabinetry and case goods.

New products are always under development. Willamette's MDF plant in Malvern now markets moulding and architectural trim made from MDF rather than the more conventional and more costly pine or hardwoods. Duraflake also manufactures Duraflake MR, a moisture resistant particleboard that won't warp or swell like solid wood.

In addition, five of Willamette's particleboard and MDF plants produce pre-finished panels. Cabinet and furniture manufacturers who purchase pre-finished panels from suppliers like Willamette can eliminate or greatly reduce their need for in-house finishing stations.

Waste reduction

Particleboard and MDF are the ultimate waste reduction products, made entirely from wood shavings and sawdust. But further steps are taken to reduce the amount of waste generated during the production process.

* At the SurePine and Duraflake particleboard plants, for instance, sophisticated saw systems optimize the yield from each panel, greatly reducing the amount of trim that is recycled back into production.

* In the plywood plants and sawmills, equipment has been installed that maximizes the amount of wood captured from each tree harvested, increasing conversion rates by about 20 percent.

* Improved logging and retrieval methods in the woods have reduced residue at the logging sites to about 18 percent of the total tree harvested (mainly in the form of limbs and roots).

* In all plants and mills, production waste is recycled, either back into production or converted into fuel.

Energy conservation

The wood products industry is unique among all building materials industries. It alone can convert its waste into energy to run its plants and mills, and relies far less on petroleum products during manufacturing.

At Willamette's Bennettsville operation in South Carolina, 80 percent of the MDF plant's energy needs are supplied by steam generated during the burning of waste at Willamette's companion paper mill in nearby Marlborough. This co-generation means that although Willamette contributes greatly to the community's employment and tax base, it consumes a negligible amount of the community's raw resources and energy.

All of Willamette's mills and plants convert a portion of their waste products into fuel. The remainder of products are recycled back into production.