Features Forestry Management Harvesting
Size Matters

Similarly in the woods, regardless of how fat the tree is, it’ll take roughly the same time to cut and process. This reality means changes in log sizes will dramatically impact the money you spend getting logs to the millyard, as made crystal clear by a sliding harvesting productivity scale provided to the authors by FPInnovations – Feric Division. A slick tool tracking relative logging costs by tree size in both full tree and cut-to-length simulations, and based on real Feric field data, it came to us via Jean-Francois Gingras with the caveat that it is a theoretical tool only. Still, the results illuminate.

Start with trees averaging 0.2 m3/tree as our baseline, a common benefit of working in parts of B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and rare corners of the Maritimes. Now travel to parts of Quebec, New Brunswick, or northern Ontario, and find yourself struggling through bush averaging 0.1 m3/tree. Assuming you’re geared up for small wood and know what you’re doing, your cost of getting processed trees to roadside has leapt by 55% in a full tree system and over 35% in a well-oiled CTL system.

Most in the industry might feel they know all this. Still, for those new to the game, and even for the rest of us, it’s important for several reasons to occasionally take a closer look at the relationship between log size and productivity, volume recovery, and product value.

Apples to oranges
For starters, there’s everyone’s favourite topic – The on-again softwood lumber dispute. When it comes to cross-border log cost comparisons, log size is often an under-appreciated factor. Leaving currency, distance to market, and Crown forest management responsibilities aside for a moment, not all sawlogs are created equal.  Simply, what passes for a sawlog in Chibougamau, Que. bears no resemblance at all to the sawlogs arriving at a typical Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) sawmill in Alabama, which may again differ from the Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) logs arriving at a northern Interior mill in B.C. Each brings a mix of logging costs, productivity and potential product value that affects their true market value.

Take the small end diameter (SED) 16-ft sawlog examples we’ve used to run the simulations for this article. Start with a “typical” SYP mill SED of nine inches, move to today’s average of 7-in SED at a B.C. central Interior canter line, and then sadly come to rest at an average SED of 5-in you might expect in a northern Quebec dimension mill. Never mind that the latter two originate some 1,000 km or more from the market, intuitively we know we’d never pay the same cubic metre charge for these logs. And with good reason. As the comparative chart below shows, even an inch difference in SED can severely impact a mill’s productivity and profitability, and thus what it can afford to pay for its logs.

These comparisons are also key to loggers, especially private woodlot contractors, bidding on potential contracts. The simulations may be theoretical, but the percentage differences are real enough to consider closely when looking at a stand of small wood. Also as the industry emerges from the current doldrums, and entrepreneurs from central Newfoundland to northeastern New Brunswick and the central Interior look at suddenly-available small log supplies, grasping these factors will be central to any business plan.

Finally, and our main reason for this look at the impact of log size, is the changing face of the Canadian forest products sector in many regions. As the forest industry re-tools and re-invents, many regions have lost or may soon lose their historical pulp wood clients. This is especially true in Atlantic Canada (and border states), parts of Quebec and Ontario, and Saskatchewan. So if your clients for your logs big and small are now principally solid wood players, with perhaps an emerging bioenergy sector on the side, it’s perhaps worth considering who we’re now growing trees for and who we’re likely to be selling them to in the coming decades. Private landowners may have more latitude on this front, but Crown land managers may also want to consider how we manage (spacing, pre-commercial and commercial thinning) and when we harvest our future resource.

All food for thought as you look over these comparisons and charts relating log size to sawmill production, lumber recovery, product mix, product value, and relative logging costs to roadside.

Sizing the costs
From the more detailed results supplied by HALCO’s SAWSIM simulations, CFI Magazine has extracted a few comparisons to make its own chart (below). We’re looking at the changes caused by a relatively small jump in log size that might come from small changes in forest management regimes or harvest timing, (5 to 6 inch SED), as well as the big leap to a 10-in SED you may see from comparing regions or the very long-term impact (80 plus years) from an investment in intensive forest management over letting Mother Nature have her way.  

Starting with the costs of getting the wood to roadside, we’ve made some ballpark percentage comparisons based on log volume, where trees yielding on average those 5-in SED logs represent the baseline roadside cost at 100%. In that case, that 1-in difference in tree size may shave 16 to 19% off your cut-to-length (CTL) or full-tree (FT) logging costs. Logging trees yielding on average 10-in SED logs on the other hand will cut logging costs almost in half.

Once the resulting stems hit the mill deck, the difference in production, unit costs, and sawmill profitability grows.  Log volume (or how much solid wood your sawline can “hold” at any given time) jumps a whopping 45% with an extra inch SED, and a staggering 290% by doubling SED to 10 inches. Gains in lumber production per log are even more pronounced thanks to the nature of getting square products from a round raw material – 57% more lumber per log with a one inch gain in SED, or almost 400% with a 10 inch log. Productivity per hour climbs as a result, by 47% for a 6 inch log and 200% for a 10-in log (although the logs contain much more volume per lineal foot, line speed must slow down to allow the cutting tools to handle the “bigger bite”).

One important aspect of today’s markets is the percentage of wane free, or square edge lumber, a mill makes, as these are the products in demand by the big box hardware stores. The percentage of wane free lumber climbs dramatically with the move from 5 to 6-in SED (by 46%), as well as by the move to 10 inch SED (94%). Finally, value recovery, the total value recovered per cubic metre log volume processed, also climbs with log size, from $74.17 for products made from that 16-ft, 5-in SED log to almost $80 (8%) from the 6-in SED log and almost $98 (31%) from a 10-in piece. Value gains come from higher cubic recovery, a greater percentage of wane-free lumber, and a greater percentage of wides produced (2x10s).

Put it together, and there’s little doubt a truck load of 6-in SED sawlogs is worth more to the average sawmiller than that same volume of 5-in SED logs – more than many might assume. If a delay in harvest or investment in intensive silviculture means producing a diet of average 6-in SED instead of 5-in SED logs, your logging costs could drop 19% (a huge difference in today’s world), your productivity per hour climbs 47%, your recovery increases by 8%, and your percentage of more marketable four-square lumber grows by 46%. Not a bad return on a one-inch gain.

Brad Turner is a principal with HALCO Software Systems Ltd. In Vancouver, BC, and can be reached at (604) 731-9311, ext.102, bradt@halcosoftware.com. Scott Jamieson is the group publisher and former editor of Canadian Forest Industries, and can be reached at (519) 428-3471, sjamieson@annexweb.com.