A little more than a year after the collapse of the J.D. Little Forest Centre's cooler building, the seedling nursery is looking to break production records.
Last year was a banner year for the facility, despite the cave-in of the roof of their main reefer building. The weight of the snow did that damage on March 15, 2013 but due to the subzero weather, almost all the chilling seedlings survived. According to nursery superintendent Larry Clark and managing grower Richart Cran, that meant a lot to the rebuild considerations.
"Last year we had better numbers than we could find in the records dating back to at least 2000 for most seedlings grown," said Clark. "That's what we want to see, and that is why there was confidence from the company when they had to consider investing in a rebuild."
The totals last year got close to 9 million seedlings available for Canfor and its partner forestry companies to replant, thousands more than the preseason orders.
All overruns are used up with gusto, so having more than estimated is not a problem. Having fewer than estimated is a big problem.
"One year there was a hail storm that damaged the greenhouses and we lost half the crop," said Cran. "The operational systems we have are solid, so the only real danger is a major environmental event, but those do happen."
Several years ago, another major snow load caused the collapse of one of the greenhouses. That, too, is being replaced this year. Canfor also invested in building a separate building for thawing the trees out prior to the annual treeplanting blitz, which frees up work space inside the main facility. All this is due to the bottom line performance met by this operation each year, Clark said.
"It is a total investment of about $2 million in the rebuild," said Clark. A big part of that total went into the supplies, services and labour from local construction companies, especially the BID Group of Companies that has been a longtime Canfor partner.
Some of that investment made the nursery more efficient. New mechanized docking lifts for loading trucks with trees takes away time spent by two people to manually do that job, and a job with a lot of physical concerns. Now those people are available to do other jobs that don't have the bodily stress inherent with that duty.
A new forklift was needed that reached higher than the previous one, and the new one is a skid-steer machine, which more maneuverable and safer than the former tractor-style machine.
"We built it on the same foundation, but it is a higher, so it has more capacity," Clark said. "The previous storage space would allow for 15 million trees but this one now has capacity for 21 million. That allows Canfor to store all of our trees but also a significant amount of the trees we bring in from other nurseries that will be planted in our region."
The previous cooler was about 30 years old. Engineering codes at the time required a warehouse roof of that nature to support 50 pounds per square inch of snow and ice, whereas modern codes require 70 pounds per square inch.
"There was no rot in the trusses, one of them just broke with the weight of the snow and ice, and when that one let go it caused a cascading effect," Clark said.
He is confident the new facility has the muscle to handle foreseeable winters.
Modern insulation techniques also allowed Canfor to install better wall materials for tree health and energy efficiency.
It makes the J.D. Little Forest Centre one of the most important cogs in the wheel of the B.C. forest industry, and the staff know it.
"There's something special about growing things for a living," said Clark. "That's why people really care about the place and how it performs, like Joan Bain and Sandy Hoover who have both been here more than 30 years each. That is why we do production numbers that justify all this investment by Canfor. The greenhouses and these other buildings are just big tools. It takes people who know how to use the tools to really make a place like this do what it's supposed to do."
