Big Isle lumber
aces product tests
HILO » Recent tests of laminated lumber produced from Big Island eucalyptus trees show that it is equal to the highest grades of such wood currently on the market, said Don Bryan, head of Tradewinds Forest Products LLC.
The tests were a critical step toward creating a lumber products industry on the Big Island.
Bryan said he felt "pretty good" about the results, but he was cautious about making a more positive statement because problems have already put Oregon-based Tradewinds about two years behind schedule.
The company will need at least another two years before it can open a timber processing mill on the Hamakua Coast north of Hilo, Bryan said.
There are two parts to the project. Tradewinds would harvest non-native eucalyptus on 9,000 acres of the state-owned Waiakea Timber Management Area south of Hilo. Harvesting would be at the rate of 500 acres per year, with Tradewinds replanting the harvested areas.
The harvested logs would be milled into sheets of veneer, about one-eighth-inch thick.
The company's earlier plan was to glue those sheets together to produce plywood. The current plan is to ship the sheets to the mainland where other companies will glue together as many as 150 sheets at a time, Bryan said.
The glued sheets, like massive plywood, can then be cut to create any size of beam needed for construction. This "laminated veneer lumber" is much stronger than ordinary lumber.
The whole plan was in danger earlier this month when the staff of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources recommended finding Tradewinds in default of its agreement to harvest the Waiakea area.
Bryan convinced the Board of Land and Natural Resources instead to give him until January to finish testing of preliminary samples of the Big Island products and to line up financing to build a $30 million processing mill.
After financing is complete, another year will be needed for testing variations of the product while preparing for the mill construction.
With the mill at half its originally intended size, the project is still expected to employ 100 people when under way in 2007, Bryan said.
