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BUSINESS
MAY 14, 2014 | 33

his building business, Malmquist Construction.

At that point, he was building much-needed
Ryan Schoech checks milled edges
housing in the Bakken.
on a portable wood road, produced by
“I got intrigued with the notion of it,” Malmquist
SmartLam in Columbia Falls.
said. “I said, ‘If you could ind a commodity use for GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
this then I would be really interested from an in-
vestment standpoint.’”
It all came together for Malmquist when he
found that the CLT panels were being used for mat-

ting in the construction and oil and gas industry,
which was and is still booming in the Bakken.
“That just connected the dots for me,”
Malmquist said.
He helped group investors together, one of which
is Western Building Center. The company also used
two grants from the Montana Department of Com-

merce – a Community Development Block Grant
Economic Development grant worth $380,000 and
$206,000 from the Big Sky Trust Fund for job cre-
ation – to help get the business moving.
CLT panels are essentially carbon neutral,
Malmquist said, and the raw materials needed to
produce the panels could help revive the timber in-
dustry in the Flathead. Already, FH Stoltze Lumber

and Land Co. provides the lion’s share of the lum-
ber used, but SmartLam also uses wood from 12
vendors within 200 miles of the production plant.
SmartLam now uses one of the largest CNC ma- struct buildings in the commercial sector and po- The use of CLT in construction is the answer to
chines in the world. A CNC machine uses comput- tentially in residential construction.
some of the largest problems facing the U.S. today,
ers to control tools, helping to shape and mill the “We’re going to build a new plant, dedicated ex- Malmquist said, because it provides a carbon-neu-
panels at a much quicker rate than manual labor.
clusively to construction-grade CLT,” Malmquist tral way to build durable, strong projects while also

Malmquist said SmartLam was originally using said.
reinvigorating the timber industry.
500,000 board feet of lumber each month, but that That plant should be up and running by this “It’s a mixture of all the right things that are oc-
number has increased to about 1 million board feet time next year, he said.
curring at all the right times,” he said.
since the addition of the CNC and new presses.
Already, SmartLam employs about 30 people. For more information on SmartLam, visit www.
The expansion won’t stop there: now that the With the new expansion, Malmquist said the em- SmartLam.com.
company has a handle on the oil and gas mats and ployment numbers would increase, along with the [email protected]
access decks, the next step is producing CLT to con-
amount of lumber used to build the CLT panels.

5:00 PM - STOKE FLOAT! Meet at Sliter's Park.
6:00 PM - Leave No Trace River Safety Presentation at VIP tent

8:30-10:30 AM - Event Registration at VIP Tent
10:00 AM - Beginner Slalom & SUP Race
12:30 PM - Mandatory Boater Meeting at The Big Rock
(Expert Slalom Racers) 1:00 PM - Expert Slalom at The Big Rock

*SUP Demo will begin after the SUP races at the Public Dock.