By Gabriel Gauthier
A career in the forest products industry offers as many rewards and opportunities as it does challenges. That’s what participants in Forest Products Association of Canada’s (FPAC) Green Dream Internship Program are discovering on the job at Resolute.
We are pleased to share a series of blogposts written by the new interns on their work experience and adventures.
I’ve already been working at Resolute Forest Products for more than two months. The time has flown by! I’m starting the second part of my internship, which is going wonderfully well. Today I want to explain briefly how wood is processed at Resolute, from the time the tree is harvested in the forest until you use the finished product in your home.
Contrary to popular belief, harvesting trees in the forest is not an easy task. Logging must comply with a number of laws and regulations that Resolute undertakes to apply rigorously. In fact, “Resolute has third-party certified 100% of its managed woodlands to internationally recognized sustainable forest management standards.” These standards include regulation on watercourses, harvesting, reforestation and much more.
Once wood is harvested in the forest, it is trucked directly to a sawmill. At that point, the tree, more commonly known as a log, enters the mill to be processed.
Obviously, logs that arrive directly from the forest have to be debarked.
Depending on its size, the log is analyzed for assessment and optimization of its potential. The resulting products are 2 x 4s, 2 x 6s, chips and so on.
Then the wood has to spend several hours in dryers because it still contains moisture at the end of the process.
After drying, the wood is ready to be planed to give it a texture that is smooth and pleasant to the touch.
At the end of this process, the lumber is ready to be shipped to wood sellers near you or sent to our wood processing plants to be made into more specialized products, such as finger joints, furring strips and flooring I-joists.
“Resolute Forest Products is a leading producer of lumber and other wood products for the residential construction and home renovation markets, as well as for specialized structural and industrial applications. ”
“With an annual production capacity of 2.4 billion board feet, our 14 sawmills produce construction-grade stud and dimension spruce-pine-fir lumber and are a major source of wood chips for our pulp and paper mills in Canada.”
“ In 2017, we shipped 1.9 billion board feet of construction-grade lumber within North America.”
These explanations have no doubt given you a better understanding of how wood processing at Resolute Forest Products wastes nothing, is environmentally friendly and requires advanced management logistics.
Source: resolutefp.com
