Man continues pursuit of wood plant dream
By Kat Lee – Terrace Standard
Published: December 01, 2009 11:00 PM
The CEO of a company looking to build an engineered wood plant in B.C. was up in Terrace last Friday speaking to city council, city officials and stakeholders about the proposed project.
Dave Parker of Strongwood Technologies went through the company’s plan with the city last week. Strongwood has Terrace on its short list of locations for its wood plant, with Powell River, Port Alberni and Ladysmith also in the running.
Strongwood’s technology would glue wood strands together, and would use less wood, less energy and less glue than other engineered wood methods.
It will take an initial $3 million to start up a pilot plant, and Parker is hoping to get some of this money through a loan. The company is also waiting to hear if it’ll get a $2 million loan from the federal government’s Community Adjustment Fund through Western Economic Diversification. The company would add another $1 million from private investors to build a pilot plant.
If this works out, the company would need to raise $90 million to $150 million for the main plant itself, and Parker estimates there would be 125-150 direct jobs in the plant, and more people employed in bringing the logs to the plant.
Parker said it is still up in the air as to which community would house the pilot plant or the main plant, saying that the decision will be made after the financing is complete. There is also no guarantee that the pilot plant or main plant would go to the four shortlisted locations, but Parker said the four highlighted communities are the company’s preference.
“If (the loan) is approved by Western Diversification, it will almost undoubtedly go in one of the four communities,” he said, saying the decision will be made soon after a loan is approved.
“Terrace is in a very strong position,” Parker said, noting that the community’s location makes it different than the other three’s location in the south.
“Terrace’s main rail line goes into the midwest of Canada and the U.S., which is one of the more logical ways to get the product to the market from here,” he explained. With the other locations, he’s assuming the bulk of the product will go to Vancouver and then down to California.
“That won’t be the deciding factor, but it’s one of the factors,” he said.
Parker took a tour at the Coast Tsimshian lumber yard and the Skeena Industrial Development Park while here, and said one of the biggest draws was the quality of the wood he saw in the lumber yard.
“It was exceptionally encouraging,” he said of the hemlock logs.
“Another thing that I saw…was really, a lot of land that would clearly be a great site for the plant,” Parker said, explaining that a good plant location would be cleared, on level ground, not polluted, close to a rail line, and not very close to residential areas.
While he said there were some places in town he looked at, the Skeena Industrial Development Park, also known as the airport lands development, is the key site.
Sam Harling, the city’s economic development officer, said in terms of location, one of Terrace’s draws is that there is an abundance of hemlock here.
“The other things that are great for our location is the land availability, the cost of land, the transportation infrastructure, the types of industry that have been here in the past,” he said.
“They all stack up well for Terrace.”
