The Nechako/L&M Lumber industrial site in Vanderhoof has been the site of multiple innovations.
The cluster of companies on the one site now totals four with the planer mill, the sawmill, the pellet plant and the energy system, but there are also have several sub-ventures on the site, such as making the custom bags for the pellets and manufacturing the specialized shipping pallets needed for bulk shipping.
The partnerships radiate next door to the farm supplies company across the road. Glen Dale Agra converts bulk fertilizer bags into the one-tonne pellet packages sold by Premium Pellet.
The four companies also combine to hire an army of workers for a full spectrum of jobs, from manual labourers to those requiring doctoral-level degrees.
Their operations also require a service industry that is similarly stocked with post-secondary professional credentials.
This employment effect provides a skilled labour pipeline for the graduates of the University of Northern B.C., the College of New Caledonia, and northern youth who venture out to other centres but have the chance to migrate back and work in positions within these technology-heavy forestry firms.
"It started with the L&M founders thinking about innovation as a means to make a product different than the others in the market," said senior company executive Alan Fitzpatrick. "It all started with the planers. The culture of innovation is important, it has to be deliberate and come from a desire to definitively solve problems and get more out of what you have."
Beyond these grassroots impacts, the innovation steps taken by the successive Nechako/L&M companies over the years have factored into the development of national and international business linkages. When small operators are working alongside multinational corporations like Canfor and West Fraser in the same forest, said Fitzpatrick, good relations are as much a commodity as any board or pellet you might make.
"I call us Switzerland because we have so many agreements. We work with everybody in the industry because of the specialty of what we do," Fitzpatrick said.
"Consequently, we are seen as a leader in the industry because we have leveraged technology and our fiber circumstances to be that leader in practice. Putting in the equipment is one thing, but that leads to expanding it, tailoring it to your specific needs - no two sites are the same - and bringing in extra innovations to do more with what you have."
Their business friendships have led to successful partnerships for others as well. Vanderhoof's BID Group worked so effectively with Del-Tech of Prince George on the installation of the pellet plants, heating systems and mill components that BID Group bought the fabrication company.
This helped BID Group become one of British Columbia's premier construction and fabrication firms for both high-tech and blue collar industrial applications, earning lucrative, long-term, complex contracts from Canfor and others.
Also working on the Nechako/L&M site with BID Group and Del-Tech was Comact of Quebec. In 2013, these two companies merged, forming one of Canada's most comprehensive manufacturers of forest industry production systems. Less than a year later, the Comact arm of BID Group expanded into the United States and experienced a further expansion once it was operational there. Under the Comact division alone, BID Group has about 450 employees on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, plus their other divisions in British Columbia.
For further evidence of fruitful business seeds planted at Nechako/L&M, their top customer at the planer mill in the 1960s and '70s was Apollo Forest Products, a company that was later conjoined with the Prince George-based Sinclar Group of companies.
The Stewart /Anderson families of Prince George, owners of Sinclar, also bought into the Nechako/L&M investment structure as equal partners and provide lumber sales service to the Nechako Group.
The on-site energy generation systems pioneered through Premium Pellet and Nechako Green Energy Ltd. can also be seen in use at another partner site. Lakeland Mills in Prince George is the mother source of the city's district energy system - a network of pipes that run from the mill's hog fuel burner to various buildings throughout the city's downtown.
It turns Lakeland's excess heat into cheap, renewable energy in Prince George.
When Nechako Green Energy was on the drawing board, it relied on public sector partnerships as well. The proposal needed exhaustive buy-in from the likes of the B.C. Safety Authority and BC Hydro, but funding was also needed. Since the energy benefits would flow directly from the company to the public, government became a willing ally as well, and that is now pushing others in the industry to adopt similar projects.
Joe Oliver, then the Minister of Natural Resources for Canada, said that Nechako Green Energy's system was "the first project of its kind in a Canadian mill, with significant potential for replication across the sector."
"This project opens a whole new realm of possibilities for the Canadian forest industry," said Jean-Franois Levasseur, program lead for the federal government's Investments in Forest Industry Transformation Program, which helped fund the Nechako Green Energy startup.
The unique system was held up as a leading success story at this year's meeting of the nation's ministers of energy.
The provincial and federal energy officials were told that Nechako Green Energy "has provided Nechako Lumber with revenue diversification and stability. And now that the technology has been demonstrated, it has great potential for replication across the sector, creating similar benefits for other companies and communities."
According to Kristen Cofrancesco, the sales and business development manager for Pratt &Whitney / Turboden, they are now working with forestry giant West Fraser to install two similar units at their Chetwynd facility that will generate 6,000 kilowatts each.
