a progressive outlook that emphasizes sustainability and a

By Dan Shell

CHESTER, Calif.perating a woodproducts busi-ness in what is

now a global timbereconomy requires smart,innovative business in-stincts just to survive—and a true, strategic vi-sion of the marketplaceto thrive. For his suc-cessful work with TheCollins Companies ofPortland, Ore., which in-cludes a variety of woodprocessing facilities andnearly 300,000 acres oftimberland, and for hisvision of delivering amessage of true forest-land sustainability andfinished products environmental aware-ness to his customers and the public,Timber Processinghas named Jim Quinnits 1998 Man of the Year.

Background

The 60-year-old Quinn was born andraised in Moberly, Mo. and graduatedfrom the University of Kansas in 1960with a degree in mechanical engineering.After graduation, he joined the Navy, en-tered Officers Candidate School andserved three years as an engineering offi-cer on a gasoline tanker and an oceano-graphic research vessel.

He returned to the Midwest to work foran engineering firm that did a lot of civil-type projects. “It was a good job, but I re-ally wanted to be in an operations-type ofengineering,” he remembers.

Quinn moved west, and in 1965 took aproject engineer job with Crown Zeller-bach at its Antioch, Calif. paper mill. Atthe facility for seven years, he worked ina variety of areas, including a major newrecycling facility, production planning

and human resources. While in Califor-nia, he also received a masters in busi-ness administration from J.F. KennedyUniversity in 1970.

In 1972, Quinn moved to Crown’sNorthwest regional office in Portland,Ore. and began working as an operationsanalyst in Crown’s finance department.He found his way into the solid woodproducts end of the business by perform-ing an operations study on Crown’sRainier, Ore. sawmill.

Otto Leuschel, then Crown’s operationsmanager and a well-known industry figurewho also worked for Weyerhaeuser andHampton Lumber (Quinn describes him as“my mentor in the wood products busi-ness.”), read Quinn’s report and asked himto join Crown’s wood products group.Quinn jumped at the chance.

“I had never really cared for thepulp/paper side of things, never was thatexcited about it,” he says. “But when Isaw my first sawmill it was great. Youcan see everything working and theproduct as it’s being processed, plus youhave a better idea about the product’sfinal destination. And I definitely want-

ed out of the financedepartment.”

Quinn’s first as-signment was a quali-ty control supervisorposition at Crown’sOmak, Wash. region-al office that servedfour sawmills, a ply-wood plant and a cut-stock and furnitureplant. In six years atOmak, he worked hisway up to sawmillproduction managerand then to produc-tion manager for theregion.

He’s proud of thework he did in im-proving the mills’ ac-curacy and quality,

especially in percentage of higher-gradelumber. “But we had four sawmills andnot enough resources,” Quinn recalls,noting the region was reduced to onesawmill and one plywood plant.

Quinn then moved back to Portland andworked as operations manager of Crown’swood products group. One of his lastmajor actions was the acquisition work forDant & Russell’s Warrenton, Ore.sawmill, which Crown purchased in 1983.

Two years later, in 1985, Quinn hadhis first run-in with corporate raider SirJames Goldsmith, when the 1980stakeover artist’s financial organizationpurchased Crown Zellerbach. In orderto pay off takeover debts, Goldsmithturned Crown’s northwest Oregon tim-berlands into a cash machine. Thingslike log exports were taking priorityover investments in domestic sawmillfacilities.

“I didn’t like the logging practices,didn’t like the log exports and wanted todo more domestic processing, but thatdidn’t fit with their plans. So I looked atwhere it all was going, and I submitted areport that my job be eliminated so I

O

A progressive outlook that emphasizes sustainability and a cut-ting-edge approach to product marketing have made CollinsPine Co.’s Jim Quinn Timber Processing’s 1998 Man of the Year.

Searching For Sustainability

10 • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998 • Timber Processing

eeking to find ways to differenti-ate their products in the market-place, executives with The

Collins Companies were quite interest-ed when Vice President of MarketingWade Mosby came back from a 1992trip to Europe, where he had learnedabout the Green Cross product certifi-cation program.

President and CEO Jim Quinn saw theconcept of marketing certified environ-mentally friendly wood products as just thekind of market differentiation he had beenlooking for. “We were hoping to do a cou-ple of things,” he says. “We wanted to cre-ate market differentiation, but we also wantto be able to carry a story to the public thatindustry is doing a good job of forestry andprotecting the environment.”

Since Collins Pine Co.’s 95,000 acreAlmanor Forest in northern Californiahad been managed on a select-cut basisfor more than 50 years, “We figured itought to be certifiable,” Quinn relates.He also recalls how the Collins forestersdidn’t like the idea at first, but werequickly won over when a group of “for-est auditors” (including professionallytrained foresters) came to review theirforestry practices.

The foresters—and the whole organi-zation—were especially happy whenthe Almanor Forest passed with flying

colors, receiving a score of 256 out of apossible 270 in three major categories:timber resource sustainability, forestecosystem element and socio-economicbenefits.

Collins is certifying its forests andsubsequent products under the Green

Cross label, which states that Collins’forest management practices meet or ex-ceed standards set forth by the ForestStewardship Council (FSC)—an interna-tional umbrella group which has a goal ofsetting worldwide standards for good for-est management. The FSC doesn’t certify

Controversial or beneficial?

Green Lumber

S

Demand for certified lumber is growing, according to The Collins Companies.

(Continued on page 13)

Timber Processing • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998 • 11

could get a severance package,” Quinnsays with a laugh.

After Quinn left Crown, his brother,Carl Quinn, offered him an opportunityto work in the oil industry for CeleronCorp., a subsidiary of Goodyear that

was embarking on a major, $2 billionproject for a pipeline to be constructedfrom Santa Barbara, Calif. to Houston,Tex. Quinn says his brother was “veryinstrumental” in helping his careeralong. “He provided me with a great

opportunity after my departure fromCrown.”

Quinn initially moved to Belgium,where most of the pipe was being manu-factured, to oversee quality control and


shipping. He then moved to Santa Bar-bara to begin work on the pipeline pro-ject, but that’s when Goldsmith camecalling again. This time Goldsmith’s tar-get was Goodyear, but unlike CrownZellerbach, the rubber and tire giant wasable to sell off enough assets to repel thetakeover attempt.

In the process, though, Goodyear soldalmost everything, including all ofCeleron except the pipeline project. In1987, Quinn moved to Houston as vicepresident of administration for Celeron.

“It was a great job and paid well, but Iknew it wasn’t a major part ofGoodyear’s business,” Quinn says. “Atthe time, I thought I was done in the for-est products industry.”

That same year, Leuschel had givenQuinn’s name to a recruiter for CollinsPine. Quinn interviewed, then didn’t hearanything for several months and washappily surprised in fall 1988 when hewas offered a job.

Quinn joined the Collins Companies inDecember 1988, initially as an executivevice president overseeing the sawmills.In July 1989 he was elected Presidentand CEO of Collins Pine Co., and thefollowing October was elected to thesame positions for Ostrander Resources.(Following the acquisition of Weyer-haeuser panel plants in Klamath Falls,Ore., Quinn was named President andCEO of Collins Products LLC, whichproduces plywood, particleboard andhardboard siding.)

Plan Of Action

The mill at Chester was the company’stop priority when Quinn signed on, andthe 1943 facility, the oldest in the compa-ny and still running plenty of originalequipment, needed plenty of modernizingand streamlining.

To begin with, the mill was sti l lusing a 40 acre log pond and bull deckfeeder into the mill, where unsortedlogs of all species were sawn as theycame out of the water. “At first we justwent back to basics, then we reallystarted focusing on quality and accura-cy,” Quinn says.

The operation began sorting in thewoods and on the yard, began sawingpure species runs and got rid of the logpond. Further upgrades included a cool-ing tower for a cogeneration plant.

Since the mill still receives plenty oflarge logs thanks to Collins’ forestrypractices, most upgrades have beendownstream of the headrigs and edgers:In 1997 a new Wellons kiln was started

up, but a grading, trimming and sortingline was added in 1990; a new planermill was added in ’92 in a building thathad formerly housed a particleboardplant; a Schurman 12 in. double arborgang went in in ’93; and a cutup plantwas started up in ’94 in the original plan-er mill building.

“We wanted to add more value to theproduct and further process a whole hostof items,” Quinn says of the secondaryprocessing facility, which is operated as asubsidiary company, CP Specialties.

Also in 1992, Collins Pine Co. elimi-nated its company logging operation,which was running on old equipment.“Since all the logging equipment had tobe upgraded and we were also trying toupgrade the mill, we decided to go tocontract loggers instead of recapitalizingour own operations,” Quinn says.

Operations were also altered at KaneHardwood in Kane, Pa., which is alsoowned by the Collins family. Cuttingmore than a dozen species, in 1994 themill refocused its efforts on a fewspecies, primarily black cherry, red oakand maple, and went from two to oneshift. “We just sort of simplified things toget a better focus on the hardwood side,”Quinn says.

As a result of the changes in opera-tions, the Collins Companies had gonefrom 900 employees to less than 500 in1994. At about the same time, fluctuatinglumber markets helped lead Quinn andCollins into a new direction.

New Direction

“In 1993 and ’94 a fundamentalchange in the timber industry really hithome,” Quinn says. “Forest Servicelands had been pretty much cut off bythen, and when lumber prices reallyspiked up, log prices went up. Whenlumber prices hit those high levels in’93, a lot of other countries began rid-ing the strength of our pine markets, butwithin months prices went down as cus-tomers sought alternate products andmaterials.”

During that t ime, dramatical lychanging lumber markets and the vul-nerability of Collins’ older mills led theCollins board to begin talking aboutnew directions for the mills and compa-nies. What emerged was a consensus toaggressively pursue value-added prod-ucts and market differentiation throughits certified “green” lumber products(see sidebar).

The biggest impact of the board’s de-cision, however, came when Quinn wascontacted in 1996 by executives fromU.S. Timberlands to see if the company

Sustainability(Continued from page 11)

Collins: A Profile

The Coll ins Companies storybegan in 1855, when Truman D.Collins began the first Collins forestproducts operation at a site in north-western Pennsylvania near the pre-sent Kane Hardwood facility. Oper-ations expanded westward in 1900with the purchase of timberland inWashington and Oregon. Additionalpurchases in 1902 became Collins’California timber base. In 1918, hisson, Everell S. Collins, establishedheadquarters in Portland, Ore. Tru-man W. Collins, who succeeded hisfather Everell in 1940, articulatedand implemented a long term visionof stewardship in sustained yieldforest management when he hiredforesters to manage the company’s94,000 acre northern California Al-manor Forest to provide jobs “inperpetuity.”

Today, The Collins Companies, stillowned by the family, remain headquar-tered in Portland and consist of:

● Collins Pine Co., Chester, Calif.,includes a sawmill, plus a cutup plantthat’s operated as a separate business,CP Specialties. Facilities include the95,000 acre Almanor Forest. Pro-duces primarily pine and fir lumber inshop, industrial and common grades,plus cut stock.

● Ostrander Resources, Lakeview,Ore., consists of Fremont Sawmillplus 74,000 acres of timberland. Theoperation produces pine, fir and in-cense cedar products in shop, indus-trial and common grades, plus cutstock. Ostrander also owns 42% ofMull Drilling Co., a gas and oil ex-ploration and production joint venturein Wichita, Kans. that has 200 gasand oil wells in Kansas and Colorado.

● Kane Hardwood, Kane, Pa., in-cludes a dimension mill and cutupplant that produces a variety of 4⁄4through 12⁄4 hardwood lumber prod-ucts, plus edge-glued panels and stairrail components. Assets include125,000 acres of prime hardwoodforests.

● Collins Products LLC, KlamathFalls, Ore., has a western softwoodplywood plant, particleboard plantand hardboard siding plant that pro-duce sheathing and industrial ply-wood, industrial and commercialgrade particleboard and lap and panelhardboard siding.

● Collins Resources International,Portland, Ore., is an import/exportfirm.

● Three Builder Supply retailstores in California.



products; instead, it sets internationalstandards to which certifying companiesmust adhere when evaluating any compa-ny’s forest practices.

Collins Pine’s certifying company isScientif ic Certif ication Systems ofOakland, Calif. A five-person SCSevaluation team, composed of a foresteconomist, a logging and forest healthspecialist, a professional forester, a bi-ologist and the SCS project manager,visited the forestry operation and con-ducted three field investigations overeight months.

The team interviewed foresters andmill managers, analyzed data compiledby Collins’ forestry staff, conducted for-est surveys, interviewed employees andmembers of the community and reviewedthe company’s financial information andsafety records.

In March 1993, SCS issued this ex-ecutive summary of Collins Pine Co.’sforest management: “Overall, the eval-uation team was quite favorably im-pressed with the Almanor Forest man-agement practices and the care takenfor wildl i fe and the general forestecosystem. Collins’ commitment to fo-cusing on the quality of what remainsrather than simply the quantity of tim-ber removed has impressed the teammembers...Overall, the team is quite fa-vorably impressed with the extent towhich the Collins Almanor Forest isbeing managed in a manner consistentwith pertinent principles of sustainableforestry.”

Almanor Forest became the first in-dustrial forestland in the U.S. to be certi-fied for sustainable forestry under FSCstandards. The Collins Companies’122,000 acre Pennsylvania Forest wascertified in 1994 (see story on KaneHardwood, page 16) and efforts areunder way to certify 75,000 acres offorests in southern Oregon.

Quinn says the certification processfor the Almanor Forest cost less than abasic company books audit by an outsideaccounting firm. But maximizing pay-back of the certification effort throughselling and marketing certified, environ-mentally sensitive products requiresplenty of work also.

“It requires education and explanation,and a lot of companies aren’t interestedin (certification) because they want im-mediate payback. But we don’t look at itthat way because we’re looking at thelong-term,” Quinn says.

“Our view is that forest (and product)certification gives you a great idea ofwhat you’re doing; it’s a great motivatorbecause all our people are proud of what

we’re doing; and it really helps the publicimage of industry because it’s a thirdparty doing the certifying.”

In fact, Quinn is hard-pressed to de-cide what’s more important: the competi-tive edge forest certification might pro-vide, or the positive public image andreal benefits to the environment. But asan executive who likes to take the longview, Quinn believes the overall benefitsare more important.

In fact, efforts such as the AmericanForest & Paper Assn.’s much-publicizedSustainable Forestry Initiative mighthave great intentions, but since it lacks athird-party component, it will always beviewed by a skeptical public as vested in-terests patting themselves on the back, hebelieves.

“I don’t think an industry that’s al-ready in trouble can create a self-regulat-ing mechanism,” Quinn says. “A lot ofpeople in our industry are still in denial,but the truth is almost everyone outsideof our industry thinks we’re damagingthe environment.”

Mention the FSC at a gathering ofsawmillers and somebody is sure to reactwith great concern about the FSC’s in-tentions. (In recent months Timber Pro-cessinghas received calls and correspon-dence expressing such concern about theorganization, which is apparently viewedby some as a harbinger of a “new worldforestry order.”)

To those who believe the FSC is onlya preservationist front organization andthat its guidelines are only a foot in thedoor for worldwide forestry regulations,“I’d reply that you haven’t read the mate-rial, and you’re thinking too much aboutyourself,” Quinn says.

“We haven’t been handicapped inany way at all by going through certifi-cation,” he emphasizes, adding thateven some environmental groups arescared of the FSC certification processbecause it provides a market-based so-lution to forest issues instead of thegovernment edicts that preservationistslove so much.

“Some people in our own industry arescared of the concept, but we’d like tosee more people join us,” Quinn says,noting that in some cases The CollinsCompanies have had trouble filling or-ders because they couldn’t produceenough certifiable products.

Currently, all The Collins Companies’certified forest products are sold underthe CollinsWood brand name. Successfulprojects have included supplying Lexing-ton Furniture Industries with specialtyhardwoods for its “Keep America Beauti-ful” furniture line, providing certifieddoor and window stock for AndersenCorp., and supplying Home Depot with aspecialty line of certified lumber. A new

initiative has the both Chester and Kanemills sending certified lumber samples tothe Martin guitar company, which isplanning a line of environmentally sensi-tive instruments.

The marketing and promotion of certi-fied forest products requires lots of workand educating of customers, but Quinnsays he’s seeing more interest all thetime. In fact, according to the newlyformed Certified Forest Products Council(CFPC), a non-profit business initiativeto bring customers and suppliers togetherand promote responsible purchasinghabits that will improve forest practicesworldwide, the market for certified forestproducts is rapidly expanding.

Recently, Duke University, DartmouthCollege, the U.S. Postal Service and TheGap have initiated projects to use certi-fied wood products for construction or asraw materials. Turner Corp., which over-saw $3.3 billion in construction in 1996,has also begun working with the CFPC.

In addition to certified forests andproducts, The Collins Companies are tak-ing the green operating concept even fur-ther with the adoption of Natural Stepprograms at its Collins Products LLC fa-cilities in Klamath Falls.

The Natural Step is a business opera-tions program that provides an additionaldecision-making process to any capitalproject decision. The Natural Step en-courages planners to seek alternate ap-proaches that reduce a given company’sdependence on products and processesthat cause pollutants and are non-renew-able in nature.

“This has resulted in some really neatprojects,” Quinn says, citing a new cool-ing tower project and heat recovery sys-tem project and the current analysis of ahardboard recycling center at the Kla-math Falls facilities.

Eventually, the practice will spreadthroughout The Collins Companies. “Webelieve the integration of these principlesinto our daily business practices will pro-vide us with long-term environmental,social and financial benefits that wecould not obtain by other methods,”Quinn states.

For Quinn and The Collins Compa-nies, this progressive thinking about cer-tified forests and environmentally sensi-tive products and business operations isreally old hat, starting in the 1940s whenthird-generation company president Tru-man Collins hired foresters to managethe Almanor Forest with a vision “to pro-vide jobs in perpetuity.”

Thinking green, even if it may goagainst industry’s grain, gives the com-pany traction, Quinn believes. “We findthis way of operating to be individuallyand collectively motivating,” he sayswith a smile. TP


Green Lumber(Continued from page 11)

ollins Pine Co.’s Chester, Calif.sawmill, built in 1943, seemscaught in time in some respects:

The mill still processes large logs fromits certified Almanor Forest, yet fee landsonly provide 50% of the mill’s needswhile the balance of logs from ForestService and private lands are becomingincreasingly smaller.

The mill produces 75MMBF annually,primarily in white fir and pine lumber in4⁄4, 5⁄4, 6⁄4 and 8⁄4 sizes. Pine cuttings focus on4⁄4 and 6⁄4 commons and industrial gradeitems, while a high percentage of white firis in dimension lumber.

The facility, which includes a cut-upplant and 13 mile short-line railroad, sitson 200 acres and employs 225. Hourlyworkers are union, represented by theWestern Council of Industrial Workers.

“We’ve built and upgraded all aroundthe sawmill, and we’ll get to it eventually,”says General Manager Larry Potts of themill’s past decade of upgrades, which hastouched almost every sawmill segment ex-cept the two old headrigs and primaryedgers. In fact, a sorter line installed in1994 was laid out with a new sawmillbuilding in mind, but timber supply wor-ries are keeping Collins’ management frompulling the trigger on a new mill project.

“It’s always a tough decision whether tore-capitalize,” Potts says. “We may still goahead with a new mill project, but it wouldhelp if we had more assurance the QuincyLibrary Project will go through.”

(The Quincy Library Project is aprecedent-setting process in which localinterests in and around Quincy, Calif., in-cluding preservationists and timber inter-ests, have come together and helped de-velop mutually-satisfying managementplans for parts of the Plumas NationalForest. If the project moves forward itwould give Collins Pine and other millsan added, consistent level of timber sup-ply they could count on, but several

major preservationist groups are trying toscuttle the project since it dilutes their in-fluence at the national level.)

Logs coming to the Chester mill arescaled by the Timberline Log Grading/Scaling Bureau, then unloaded, sorted anddecked by a LeTourneau log handler; a Cat966C wheel loader and two Cat 980Cwheel loaders, plus a Cat 235 excavator-type machine on a Pierce carrier.

Logs are sorted by source, species andlength. Log specs are lengths from 8-40ft., with a 5 in. minimum top. Some shortlogs are pulled into separate sorts, andsome peeler logs are sent to Collins ply-wood facilities in Klamath Falls, Ore.

Logs are fed through a Nicholson 60in. ring debarker, through a guillotine-type cutoff saw and on to the headrigs.

The headrigs are a matched set of two9 ft. Filer & Stowell bandmills fed bySalem carriages. The #1 headrig, whichsaws more grade material in logs from 12in. and up, features Inovec scanning andoptimization systems. The #2 headrig,which saws logs up to 12 in. primarilyfor production, operates manually.

Each headrig feeds sideboards to its ownedger, both Portland Ironworks 4-saw unitswith stack-cylinder setworks. Cants are fedto a 12 in. Schurman double arbor gangwith Ukiah-type guide system, while dou-bles and triples are fed to an 8 ft. Mc-Donough bandmill vertical linebar resaw.

Boards from the machine centers con-verge on a line feeding a USNR trimmer/sorter system, which features Applied The-ory scanning and optimization and a Luci-dyne 10-character grade mark reader.

Boards are moved to the mill’s exten-sive network of 21 kilns, which provide atotal of 2.2MMBF in drying capacity. Anew Wellons zone-controlled unit wasstarted up last year, while the others arethe old, shotgun-type kilns (six have beenfitted with Wellons controls).

Lumber that needs surfacing is fed to a

25 in. wide, 16 knife Stetson-Ross planer,which features all-hydraulic feed, planerdrive and transfers. Finished lumber flowspast graders and under a Lucidyne grademark reader, then on to an Irvington-Moore 20 ft. trimmer and down to a manu-al green chain, where 21 pulls are made.All packages are bar-coded and moved tofinished goods inventory.

Though the mill had been making somevalue-added products with a dip chain gangsaw and a couple of chop saws, a separatecutup plant was formally added in 1994.Today, the cutup plant, operated as CP Spe-cialties, features a line of six Industrial man-ual chop saws; a back-rip saw; edge sorter;Portland Ironworks 4-saw selective rip saw;and a precision end-trim saw. The plant isalso starting up a new Dimter optimizedchop saw line this month.

Potts says the mill moved into value-added items slowly, at first making finger-joint blocks, then cut stock, then the rip sawwas added to do even more custom work.

The CP Specialties plant hasn’t doneany gluing yet, Potts says. “That wouldbe a big decision for us, because rightnow we’re a non-competitive supplier,and in some areas we could become com-petitive with our customers.”

Even so, the value-added capacity isbound to rise because it fits so well withThe Collins Companies philosophy, Pottssays. “Our core business strategy is totake the product as far into the market-place as possible. We’re doing that withthe cut-up plant, and when you throw inthe certified products issue, you can findsome real interesting niche products.”TP


Mixing Old With New

C

Secondary processing plant is expanding. . . . . .with addition of new Dimter optimized chop saw line.

Chester General Manager Larry Potts

would be interested in any of the Weyer-haeuser facilities for sale in KlamathFalls. As a result, the Collins organiza-tion purchased the plywood, particle-board and hardboard plants.

Adding the capability to produce com-posite and value-added products fits wellwith all the companies’ long-term inter-ests, Quinn believes. “We’re always in-terested in extending the resource andfinding ways to make the fiber go far-ther,” he says. “Plus, the three panelplants are situated well with our other as-sets near Lakeview, Ore. and in northernCalifornia.”

Acquiring the panel facilities instantlydoubled both Collins Companies salesand employee numbers to more than$200 million and 1,000, respectively.The deal included an agreement withU.S. Timberlands (which bought Weyer-haeuser’s 600,000 acres of timber in thearea) to supply the mills with logs for 10years. Also included as a term of salewas the continued involvement of Wey-erhaeuser’s distribution group with thehardboard facilities’ products.

Quinn says the arrangement suitsCollins Products just fine. “We’re a smallcompany, so network sales and service ofhardboard would have been hard for us totake on, but the relationship has helpedus in other ways, since we also sell someof our other products into their distribu-tion group.”

The arrangement reflects the philoso-phy of Collins Companies that “wecan’t capitalize and do everything,”Quinn says. Such thinking has made theCollins facilities prime examples of op-erations that have turned the term“strategic alliances” from a buzzwordinto reality.

Kane Hardwood sells many of itsgreen-certified veneer grade logs throughFreeman Corp. in Kentucky, which doesthe marketing and brokering. Collins alsoworks with States Industries in Eugene,Ore., which along with Freeman were thefirst U.S. companies to sell green-certi-fied plywood, Quinn says.

The Collins Companies’ emphasis ongreen certification, strategic alliances andother progressive thinking haven’t goneunnoticed by others in and outside of in-dustry. Recent awards include the Presi-dent’s Award for Sustainable Develop-

ment in 1996 and a whole slew of awardsin 1997, including an Oregon BusinessExcellence Award for Strategic AlliancesDevelopment; the Governor’s Challengeof Change Award for a Sustainable Ore-gon; and a Green Cross MillenniumAward for Corporate EnvironmentalLeadership.

Quinn says that with his managementstyle, he “tries to focus more on the long-term than short-term; I try to focus onbuilding the fundamentals to make thingsbetter; and I try to lead by the example ofthinking strategically.”

As for the Coll ins Companies,“There’s a lot of autonomy in these op-erations,” Quinn says, adding thatthough the green-certification emphasiswas “sort of a top-down decision,” man-agers meet regularly and reach consen-sus on projects.

Quinn describes an operating environ-ment in which managers are empoweredto make plenty of decisions and arestrongly encouraged to continually ana-lyze and study procedures and look fornews ways to approach them.

“I try to help create an atmosphere ofpeople who enjoy what they’re doing andcan be proud if it,” he says. TP


For Fast, Free Info Circle #55 For Fast, Free Info Circle #56

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Sustainability(Continued from page 12)

By Mike Tankersley

KANE, Pa.ertification’s not for everyone,insists Blaine Puller, Lands Man-ager for Kane Hardwood, a Div.

of Collins Pine Co., based here. But it’sthe right program at the right time for acompany that wants to have its forestmanagement procedures and principlesgiven an independent stamp of approval.

That’s the case for Kane Hardwood,which was awarded certification of a well-

managed forest in October 1994 by Scien-tific Certification Systems (SCS), whichoperates under the auspices of the ForestStewardship Council. Kane managementbelieved its forest management practiceswere pretty good back in 1993, but therewas no real verification of that fact. “Itwas just a simple matter of our forestersmaking that claim,” notes Puller.

So, Kane Hardwood followed the leadof its sister division on the West Coast,Collins Pine Co., Chester, Calif., andturned to SCS, one of only two certifying

agencies in the U.S.SCS provides third-party confirmation thata company is actuallydoing what it is claim-ing to do, such as man-aging a sustainable for-est. To attain certifica-tion status from SCS,Kane had to prove itwas meeting the prin-ciples, criteria andstandards set forth bythe Forest StewardshipCouncil in managingits 122,000 acres.

The task was gruel-ing, costly and time-consuming, but Kaneemerged in late 1994with the SCS seal ofapproval. This meantthat wood producedfrom Kane’s forestlandcould carry the Collins-Wood® tag, signifyingthat it was documentedto have come from asustainable forest—acrucial element in thecompany’s marketingplans.

“We’re shooting fora niche market,” Pullersays. “We want to tar-get those customerswho want to buy woodfrom a sustainablesource.”

Puller says KaneHardwood and theother Collins compa-

nies are offering another ingredient—fin-ished products coming from well-man-aged forests—into the traditional Ameri-can buying habits involving productquality and cost.

CollinsWood gives wood consumers achoice in the marketplace, and Puller be-lieves his company is on the leading edgeof a worldwide trend.

“We’re real excited about it,” he says.“Certification is not for everybody. Eachowner has his own objectives for owninghis land, whether it’s short term or longterm or some combination. And I wouldnot condemn anyone for the way they dobusiness.

“But I think this is a great program forforest sustainability. This is voluntary,not mandated.”

And that’s exactly as it should be, ac-cording to Puller. He’s against more gov-ernment rules and regulations, and he’sfor private property rights. To his way ofthinking, this is simply a segment of theforest products industry responding to anemerging market need.

“There will always be people in thiscountry who buy the best possible prod-uct at the least cost,” Puller says. “Butthere are other people in this country whowant to buy a quality product and be as-sured the product came from a well-man-aged forest.”

Certification Process

Collins Pine Co.’s commitment to sus-tainability began in the first half of the20th century in the Collins Almanor For-est near Chester, Calif. This ethic was ex-tended to forest management on theCollins Pennsylvania Forest.

When the Almanor forest was certifiedin 1993, Kane was ready to follow. TwoSCS representatives spent a week at KaneHardwood in the fall of 1993, touring com-pany lands, asking questions and request-ing a variety of documents that they wouldanalyze over the winter. Kane staffers pre-pared the documents, which among otherthings detailed how much timber the com-pany had been cutting in recent years, whatits land base was, what its species mix wasand what the mill needs were.

Kane Hardwood in Pennsylvania believes it has gotten better byundergoing a third-party certification process to document itsproper forestry practices.

Right Program, Right Time

C

Kane’s dimension plant adds value to low-grade material.


In June 1994, a teamof three SCS forestryexperts returned toKane Hardwood andspent seven days there,field-scoping the analy-sis done over the winterand gathering more in-formation.

The certification pro-gram has three main el-ements, and a companymust pass all three ele-ments to attain certifi-cation. They are:

● Forest ecosystemmaintenance, whichdeals with such issues ashow the company con-trols erosion, maintainswater quality, wildlifeand diversity, etc.

● Forest sustainabili-ty, which deals withhow the company balances growth andremoval of trees and how it maintains itsspecies mix.

● Community relations, which dealswith how the company treats its contrac-tors, other residents and people who wantto use the company’s lands for recre-ational purposes.

Kane Hardwood didn’t need to makesweeping policy changes to attain certifica-tion, since it was essentially on the righttrack, as management believed. But it hasmade many improvements, mostly in thearea of documenting its policies and proce-dures already in place, according to Puller.

“We had been doing well or wewouldn’t have passed,” Puller says, not-ing that SCS essentially approved KaneHardwood’s procedures. “But since ourcertification, we’ve come to realize thatwe need to analyze more data and be alot more formal in ourdocumentation of pro-cedures and practices.That’s been a lot differ-ent, and we’ve had toadd more people.”

And that means moreexpense. “This adds sig-nificantly to the cost ofdoing business,” Pullerconcedes. “There’s theinitial cost of the (SCS)audit itself, plus wehave opportunity costs,where we lose out tocompetitors because ofthe way we do things.”

But there have beenactual benefits as well.“During this process, wegained a lot of ideas onhow to manage our landsbetter,” Puller says. “We

also got a report (from SCS) that pointedout, not only our successes, but also someshortcomings in our procedures.”

The 18 logging crews that contract withKane Hardwood were not affected greatlyby the certification process, though theirperformance is evaluated, Puller says.Mostly, it’s a case of the loggers workingwhen ground conditions allow, and notworking when there’s a chance that har-vesting would harm the ground.

“The loggers in this area want to workso they can get paid, but they have theirown sense of pride and stewardship,”Puller says. “They don’t want to beknown for messing up the land for a longperiod of time for short-term dollars, so itwas no real problem for them.”

As for the mill operation, Kane hashad to maintain higher log inventoriesthan are ideal during the spring and fall,

when loggers are mostlikely to be kept out ofthe woods because ofthe weather and groundconditions.

Kane Hardwood pro-duces approximately10MMBF annually,about 50% of which isblack cherry, followedby soft maple, red oakand hard maple. Themill also producessmaller percentages ofash, beech and poplar.Majority of productionis 4⁄4 and 5⁄4, with some 6⁄4and 8⁄4, especially incherry.

Kane typically hadshipped its productioninto high-end furnituremarkets in the NorthCarolina area and to

distributors. But because of the emer-gence of the CollinsWood brand, thecompany is finding it necessary to devel-op some smaller-scale markets, accord-ing to Bruce Duncan, Mill & Mainte-nance Supervisor.

“Many of the big furniture manufac-turers aren’t really interested in buying acertified product because of the need tokeep it separate from their typical prod-uct,” Duncan says. “However, companiesbuilding custom pieces of furniture aremore willing to use an environmentallyfriendly source for their product.”

About 40% of the mill’s production isCollinsWood, according to Duncan, whoadds, “We’re looking to increase that inthe future.”

Mill Operations

Logs entering theyard are separated de-pending on their source.Logs purchased on theopen market are keptseparate from logs re-moved from companyland to assure a chain ofcustody for wood ulti-mately tagged asCollinsWood. Withineach separation, logsare also divided byspecies and length (8 ft.,9-12 ft., 13-16 ft.), with16 ft. lengths being thelongest the mill canhandle. Veneer logs aresorted and laid out forbuyers to look through(Kane does not processany veneer material;

Kane Lands Manager Blaine Puller displays CollinsWood product.

Most grade is taken off at resaw station.


some sawlogs are sold on the open marketas well).

A pair of Caterpillar 950s feed the milland separate logs on the yard. Separa-tions are important because the mill con-tinually processes runs of particularspecies and/or lengths; there are also runsof logs earmarked as CollinsWood.

Diameter and length of all logs that gothrough the log deck are inputted into ahand-held Omnidata polycorder, whichtracks the the logs that go through themill in cubic volume.

“What we get from that is, at the endof each shift, a lumber recovery factor(LRF), which is a ratio of the cubic vol-ume going into the mill versus the lum-ber coming out,” says Duncan. “Thisgives us a better indication of what ouractual yield is (compared to overrun fig-ures traditionally used by most mills).”

Logs go through a Salem 35 in. ringdebarker and proceed to an accumulationdeck ahead of the headrig (bark is sold asmulch except during the winter, when itis used for fuel in the mill’s wood-firedboiler). From there, logs go through aCoe slab chipper ahead of a Filer &Stowell 8 ft. bandmill with Filer & Stow-ell four-knee carriage. There is no scan-ning at the headrig, but Lewis Controlssetworks allow the sawyer to make a bestopening face (BOF) on each log.

“The sawyer can set the log edge outto a laser light, and the computer con-trolling the setworks computes the di-


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18AViking Chains

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Pennsylvania FollowsKane Hardwood’s lead

Since Timber Processingvisited KaneHardwood in October, the state of Penn-sylvania successfully completed the rig-orous certification process to have about1.2 million of its 2.1 million acres offorestland certified by Scientific Certifi-cation Systems (SCS). The land is locat-ed in the north-central part of the state.

Pennsylvania is one of only three

states in the nation to undergo and pass aforest certification process. Because ofthe number of acres receiving certifica-tion, Pennsylvania now has the largestcertified forestland in the nation (includ-ing the Collins Pennsylvania Forest).

This development is important for KaneHardwood as well. Previously, Kanecould tag as certified only wood removedfrom its own forestland, since that was theonly wood it could document as havingcome from a certifiably well-managed for-

est. Now, lumber produced from the logsKane purchases from the certified Pennsyl-vania forest can also carry the Forest Stew-ardship Council (FSC) logo.

In another development, Kane Hard-wood on October 18 received nationalrecognition as one of only three companiesworldwide to be nominated for the Nation-al Hardwood Lumber Assn.’s 1997 ForestStewardship Award. This award recog-nizes NHLA member companies that ex-emplify excellence in forest stewardship.

Mill & Maintenance Supervisor Bruce Duncan

ameter of the log and can give himsome sawing solutions that are possiblefrom that diameter, depending on whatwe’re cutting that day,” Duncan says.“The (headrig) sawyer is basically four-siding the log for the resaw, though hecan take some grade off if the resawgets backed up.”

The resaw is a similar bandmill as theheadrig and is accompanied by a Mc-Donough linebar and turner system. Theresaw removes grade with a runaroundsystem bringing pieces back to theresaw until they’re sawn down to a 6 in.cant. Those cants, as well as slabs fromthe headrig and resaw, proceed to aSchurman combination edger, which hasa set of thin-kerf guided gang saws onone side and a three saw edger systemon the other.

Defective spots on pieces are markedby graders and removed by a Irvington-Moore drop-saw trimmer. Trimmedpieces are sorted manually by length,thickness and grade, stacked and stick-ered for the dry kilns.

Kane has 500MBF drying capacity in10 Irvington-Moore kilns, five of whichare package units (60MBF capacity each)and five tracked kilns (35-40MBF capac-ity each, depending on species and thick-

ness). Most red oak is pre-driedin a 400MBF Irvington-Moore-based pre-drying building.

After drying, lumber goesthrough a shipping process thatis centered around a LucidyneColor-Scan 300 grade markreader and also utilizes a WestCoast Systems trimmer. High-grade lumber is strapped andpackaged and shipped out ei-ther by rail, container or truck.

The filing room consists ofmostly Armstrong equipment.

Dimension Plant

Lower grade material, typically 1 and2 common lumber, is routed to the di-mension plant, which remans it into ahigher-grade panel or specialty item,such as handrail pieces, balusters ornewel posts. Depending on what thesawmill is producing at a particular time,the dimension plant may have to buywood on the outside market to fill orders.

Lumber entering the reman area goesfirst through a Timesavers TBO 36 in.dual-headed sanding machine to uniformthe size. Pieces proceed to a Tyler MR

(multi-rip) saw, then to a pregrading/pre-marking station for the Grecon 2004 auto-mated chop saw, which has a computercontrol system that maintains a customercut list so pieces can be optimized to fillparticular orders.

Chopped pieces can be glued into pan-els up to 8 ft. long, using either of twoTaylor glue clamps. Those panels pro-ceed to a Timesavers 37 in. single-head-ed planer for finish planing.

A Wadkins six-head molder—pur-chased two years ago—produces handrailand flooring pieces.

Kane employs 108, including 15 in thesawmill and another 50 in the dimensionplant (two shifts). TP


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Cat units move logs and lumber.

Opening Faces

Certification?

n this issue we name Jim Quinn,President and CEO of Collins PineCo., Portland, Ore., as our Man of

the Year for 1998. He is our tenth selec-tion for the award since it was created.He is the first recipient to not own thecompany he works with.

Quinn, like the previous nine men, hasdemonstrated tremendous leadership andinnovation. Other pages of this magazinewell-document his specific efforts and ac-complishments. One of those efforts—hispush for third-party certification of hiscompany’s forestland and products—issomewhat controversial because of someof the participants in the certification gov-erning body, which is called the ForestStewardship Council (FSC). Also, thoughthe certification process is voluntary, it stillhas a regulatory ring. Finally, outside certi-fication is new to this industry, and few un-derstand how it works or if it has benefits.

The potential bottom line benefit is thatconsumers will pay more for finishedproducts which have earned chain-of-cus-tody certification, meaning that the producthas gone through a tracking program, fromthe forest, through production and distribu-tion to the point of sale, and that the prod-uct was produced from a certified “wellmanaged” forest. All of this provides akind of finished product environmentalawareness. The consumer feels betterabout himself. Sure he’ll pay another dime.

Or maybe he won’t. In the U.S. it’s tooearly in the ballgame to make this generalassessment. Not enough forest productscompanies have been selling products fromcertified forests for long enough. Quinn’soperations, Collins Pine and Kane Hard-wood, appear to be having some success inniche softwood and hardwood markets.

FSC lists 56 other companies in theU.S. besides Collins Pine that are sellingchain-of-custody certified products, in-cluding Besse Forest Products, BohlkeVeneer, Colonial Craft, Gibson, U.S.A.,P&M Cedar Products, States Industriesand other very niche oriented firms. Thecompanies on this list are selling prod-

ucts that have been documented to origi-nate from certified forests, though notnecessarily their own forests since someof the companies don’t own forestland.

But say that in the end the consumerdoesn’t buy into the idea and there’s noadditional money to be made by sellingcertified products. Are there are otheradvantages?

One could be simply that the certifica-tion process, which is time-consumingand rigorous, may provide a companyand its employees an internal sense ofdoing the right thing. The land-owningcompanies who go through the ordeal al-ready have demonstrated wise and skilledforest management or they wouldn’t haveopened their books and their forests to athird party. Nevertheless, they don’t al-ways hear from the auditors what theywant to hear. It’s not easy to suck upsuch criticism. But if the company actson all the conditions of the auditor, andcertification is granted, there’s a feelingamong the employees that “hey, we’vegot our ducks in a row.”

As of November 20, FSC-accreditedcertifiers had issued 25 forest managementcertificates in the U.S. encompassing 3.4million acres. Among the recipients: SevenIslands Land, Bangor, Me., 975,000 acres;Kane Hardwood, Kane, Pa., 117,000 acres;Collins Pine, Chester, Calif., 94,000 acres;Menominee Tribal Enterprises, Neopit,Wis., 220,000 acres; Pennsylvania StateBureau of Forestry, 1.2 million acres; Min-nesota Dept. of Natural Resources,361,000 acres; Big Creek Lumber Co.,Davenport, Calif., 7,000 acres.

As I’m writing this, J.D. Irving Ltd.,which operates a bundle of sawmills inNew Brunswick and owns more than 2million acres of timberland, is goingthrough the certification process on achunk of its forestland.

The specific certification case I’m mostfamiliar with is the certification of 1.2million acres of Pennsylvania state-ownedforestland, which happened last year. Inthis instance, FSC’s-accredited auditorwas Scientific Certification Systems. SCSapparently rounds up a diverse team ofnatural resource professionals who are fa-miliar with the region undergoing theaudit. The most familiar name on the SCSinterdisciplinary team in this project wasLloyd Irland, consulting forest economistfrom Winthrop, Me. He’s also involved inthe certification at J.D. Irving.

For seven months they interviewed statepersonnel, scrutinized records and inspect-ed forest sites. They gave the state passingscores for timber resource sustainability,

forest ecosystem maintenance, and finan-cial and socioeconomic considerations.Their final report offered numerous com-mendations, such as: “Timber manage-ment operations are skillfully implementedand follow a very thorough, scientificallybased silvicultural process.” The reportprovided several observations, such as:“The silvicultural systems are dominatedand severely limited by the challenges ofoverabundant deer.”

Also, they listed conditions that thestate must act upon to maintain its certifi-cation status, such as: “The BOF will ex-pand its current program of even-agedsilviculture to include uneven-aged andseveral-aged systems, longer and morevaried rotations...”

Of course you’re probably wondering,who is FSC anyway? Here’s the officialdefinition: “The Forest Stewardship Coun-cil is an independent, non-profit, non-gov-ernmental organization. It was founded in1993 by a diverse group of representativesfrom environmental and conservationgroups, the timber industry, the forestryprofession, indigenous peoples’ organiza-tions, community and economic develop-ment associations and forest product certi-fication organizations from 25 coun-tries...The FSC promotes responsible for-est management by evaluating and accred-iting certifiers, by encouraging the devel-opment of national and regional forestmanagement standards, and by providingpublic education and information about in-dependent, third-party certification as atool for ensuring that the world’s forestsare protected for future generations.”

FSC is composed of 255 membersfrom more than 40 countries. There arenine board members. Here’s what causessome of us in this industry to get a littleedgy. Member groups in the U.S. includeNatural Resources Defense Council,Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.One of the board members is listed as thecontact at the Natural Resources DefenseCouncil. Membership also includesHome Depot and the United MethodistChurch. And there’s Collins Pine, Colo-nial Craft and Seven Islands Land Co.

There’s always the question of hiddenagendas on the part of some of these noto-rious preservationst groups. Then again, acompany’s forest management certifica-tion wouldn’t mean much to the public ifit was simply granted by an organizationwithin the forest products industry.

Our Man of the Year, Jim Quinn, maybe proven wrong in the end. But he’s tak-ing the risk. That’s why he deserves thehonor. TP

By Rich DonnellEditorial Director


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a progressive outlook that emphasizes sustainability and a

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