March/April 2011
In the March/April issue of Timber Harvesting, Paul J. Mitchell Logging, recently honored as the Forest Resources Assn.’s National Outstanding Logger, is profiled, detailing the company’s shift from a small outfit to a chip entity serving diverse markets in upstate New York, Quebec and Ontario. Also spotlighted this month are Greenwood Resources, Seaway Timber Harvesting, the 2011 Oregon Logging Conference, and Alabama logger Jimmy Pritchett. The issue also features a review of biomass processing and handling.

The biomass industry has spawned plenty of studies, proposals and papers on intensive biomass farming, but Greenwood Resources (GWR) is one of the very few that’s currently commercially operating and proving the feasibility of intensive feedstock production through a tree farming model that delivers the exact quantity and quality—at the right time.

In recent years declining paper demand combined with the recession has led to significant consolidation and downsizing of several clean chip markets supplied by Seaway Timber Harvesting (STH) in upstate New York. The company’s largest and closest market just across the Canadian border closed in 2005 and in the last couple of years, a board plant in Ontario and two more large paper mills in Quebec also closed.

The Biomass Processing/Handling Review 2011 includes Duratech, Morbark, Komatsu, Peterson, and Bandit.

Loggers from across the Pacific Northwest and beyond made the trip here for the 73rd Oregon Logging Conference (OLC) at the Lane County Fairgrounds and Convention Center February 24-26. The event included plenty of opportunities to network with other loggers, attend educational seminars, learn about the economic forces swirling around the Northwest logging industry, and view the latest advances and newest models in logging machinery.

In 2004 Hurricane Ivan blasted southwest Alabama, among other destruction leaving behind millions of dollars in downed/damaged timber. That was also the year Jimmy Pritchett, owner of Pritchett Logging LLC, became a contractor for the Westervelt Company, a major landowner in parts of Alabama and Mississippi. It was the budding of a relationship that has enabled the 39-year-old logger to go against the grain by expanding during challenging times.

Oglethorpe Power is putting its plans to construct three 100 MW biomass power plants on hold indefinitely due to federal regulatory uncertainty. In 2008, Oglethorpe Power announced plans to build up to three biomass plants in Georgia, and was studying the best potential sites.
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