To Henry Wetelainen, value-added forestry begins in the bush at the harvesting site.
The president of the Ontario Métis and Aboriginal Association Development Corp. (OMAA) believes a gradual shift is taking place in the North American forest industry in adopting cut-to-length logging.
With business opportunities for Aboriginal loggers limited and the North’s wood basket shrinking, the organization has made its own inroads over the last few years by championing this new method, used extensively in Europe, parts of the U.S., Quebec and eastern Canada.
Wetelainen says the Ontario forest industry processes about six million cords of wood annually, but only processes one per cent according to cut-to-length methods.
Worldwide, he says, cut-to-length runs about 100 per cent participation in Finland and the Nordic countries, about 60 per cent in Germany, 85 per cent in Michigan and Wisconsin, and almost 40 per cent in Minnesota.
“But in Northern Ontario, we do very little” choosing instead to use full-length tree chipping, a less-than-efficient method of sorting out value, he says.
OMAA Development Corp. began as a lending agency for Métis entrepreneurs. They veered into the Aboriginal logging business by inheriting some bankrupt businesses.
In investigating ways to run more efficient operations, their travels took them to logging operations in Europe where cut-to-length is a widely used method.
Cut-to-length involves cutting and processing the entire tree in the bush, using highly maneuverable and lightweight equipment, such as harvesters and bunchers, to handle trees and logs with far less damage to the forest than traditional methods.
With most available land allocated to large forest companies, Wetelainen says the only way for OMAA to make any headway was to offer extra value by sorting value on-site.
Adopting cut-to-length represented a sizable chunk of investment for OMAA - about $400,000 apiece for their two high-tech processor machines and two forwarders, that Wetelainen calls “the machinery of the future.”
“There wasn’t one nickel of government money that went into our processors. It was all bank financing and our own equity we put in.”
The corporation runs a logging and training division which involves cutting wood for companies like Bowater, Abitibi-Consolidated and Columbia Forest Products on their timber limits.
In the last four years, their training division near Wabigoon in northwestern Ontario has trained more than 75 people from across Ontario in heavy equipment and wood processing, using the cut-to-length system.
With the provincial government studying whether to open up the boreal forest above 51 degrees latitude to small-scale logging, cut-to-length is the way to go, Wetelainen says.
But the cost to train people in this method is expensive - about $40,000 per person over a six-month period. OMAA offers its own training programs, including a five-week heavy equipment course in the use of excavators, backhoes and bulldozers, and also does cut-to-length wood processing and forwarder training.
The success rate in securing employment ranges around 80 per cent, many finding work in the North with mining and construction companies.
Training funds come from Human Resources Development Canada, but OMAA has a new proposal into the government and various forest industry partners, promoting an opportunity to increase skills in the workforce and add to the value of forestry in the North.
