Representatives from FedNor, the Municipality of West Nipissing, the Caisse Alliance and Economic Partners joined Sturgeon Falls Brush and Contracting GM André Larcher and investor André Vovchenko as they announced the creation of Allwood Industrial Park, with a $500,000 boost from FedNor presented by Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré. 
Company will expand its market and create local jobs
Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
If you’ve been curious about the shiny silver building on the north side of Hwy 17, on the Sturgeon Falls landfill road, it consists of kilns for drying wood. On Tuesday July 23, Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré announced that Sturgeon Falls Brush (SFB) was awarded $500,000 from FedNor to add a bio-mass-fueled boiler system that will allow the company to dry lumber to the very specific requirements of the cross-laminated timber industry, opening them up to a larger wood products market. This project is part of an ongoing expansion that will see SFB not only meet local and expanded market demands but also increase local employment as a result.
J.P. Martin, Senior Advisor to SFB, explains, “If you buy kiln-dried lumber, it’s dried to the construction industry standard of 20%. The cross-laminated timber (CLT) and the Thermolog standard is 10%.” Thermolog are home kits – basically white pine glued and sealed on a piece of styrofoam and then machined – the pieces fit into each other much like Legos to construct a home. “They have a factory in Quebec right now, in northern Quebec, and they were looking to set up in Ontario for the Ontario market,” says Martin, mentioning a deal Thermolog has to build homes on First Nations.
The new kiln building has two bays as part of the first phase of expansion. The control room can handle up to 5 bays. The wood is placed in the bay, the doors closed, and the wood dried to the specifications of the client.
Acting as MC for the announcement, which drew a substantial crowd of about 30 dignitaries and municipal officials, J.P. Martin invited Marc Serré to speak on behalf of Patty Hajdu, Minister for FedNor. Serré commended both André Larcher, CEO of Sturgeon Falls Brush, and André Vovchenko, a private investor from southern Ontario who is partnering with SFB, for their vision in moving forward with the kilns, and the employment opportunities that will be provided to local workers.
Serré mentioned the foresight of former mayor Joanne Savage, who was present, and current mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon, and the municipal Economic Development team who all worked together to move the project forward. “When we look at local partners, (…) you did a good job here. (…) Neil Fox of Economic Partners supported Sturgeon Falls Brush in the past, and today.” He spoke to the importance of small business in the area and how the various agencies are integrated and work to consolidate the ideas, get the funding, and assist in development. “FedNor plays an important role all across northern Ontario, (…) looking at how can we best [develop] business, improving jobs in the area and, more importantly – and one of the reasons I became an MP – trying to keep our youth in the area.”
Serré said the $500K investment by the federal government served to purchase the new boiler system for the kilns, noting that in the face of recent closure announcements in the forestry sector, the positive news in West Nipissing adds a note of hopeful optimism. “It’s so important for the area, because we know we have a lack of capacity in the area (…) We have to find ways to get new products going (…) There’s a lot of potential. The industry has been hard hit (…) This structure and the expansion, it really means good jobs. We need jobs in the region. (…) This is a good example of a solid project that’s going to look at more expansion (…) This is phase one.”
André Larcher, CEO of Sturgeon Falls Brush, announced that the kiln project will operate under the separate name of Allwood Industrial Park. “The generous contribution will allow the company, the family business, to continue to thrive and offer opportunities for years to come (…) I need to say a special thanks to our staff and our labour force, who spend countless hours and devoted all their time and themselves to make sure that we got the job done. [This project will] change the future of the municipality and make an impact on the forest industry as a whole. We’re doing something that has never been done before – a tree-to-home industrial park! Basically, a round log will come in, or a load of wood will come in, will get processed at our facility, will get treated and dried and dressed and then manufactured into a CLT component, or a thermal home kit, and leave this property fully functional, ready to install. Nobody has done that before.”
Larcher expressed his gratitude for the financial support. “There is only one way that a project of this magnitude can move forward, and that is when the private sector and our government work together to achieve a higher degree of success. So our future is brighter than ever and the support we’re receiving here today is incredible,” he acknowledged.
Larcher spoke to the anomaly of opening a new wood industry enterprise when sawmills everywhere are closing down. “The bankers wanted to know, well, are you crazy? And we said no. We said we realize that we’re not in a position to compete with the big boys. (…) We want to address the requirements of a niche market, a new and emerging technology. We’re going to dry to the specifications of the CLT industry, which is about half the moisture content of construction lumber. We’re going to be a little bit immune to the fluctuations (…). André [Vovchenko] had the vision to reach out because nobody else is doing it.”
