Page 35 - Flathead Beacon // 12.31.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
BUSINESS MONTHLY
DECEMBER 31, 2014 | 35
SMARTLAM
Continued from Page 33
Jason Herman, production man- ager at SmartLam, said the company is working with the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to come up with a solution to keep stream- beds intact during logging projects; nor- mally, the logging crews would dig up the streambed and put in a culvert for the water so the trucks and equipment can drive over.
“Now, we’ve designed some bridges for logging,” Herman said.
This means the streambeds stay where they are, and the bridge can be removed when the project is completed. Malmquist noted that such bridges are already in use for F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Co. logging projects, which is a neat circle, since the wood used to build the bridge came from Stoltze.
In fact, SmartLam is breathing life into the local timber industry with its voracious need for timber.
“We’re buying everything (Stol- tze) can produce in two-by-eights,” Malmquist said.
But as the SmartLam production line becomes more automated, which it will once the company moves into its new building, expected to be between 120,000 and 160,000 square feet, the specific two-by-eight dimensions will become less important, he said.
To keep the company pumping out 1 million to 1.2 million board feet each
Jason Herman, production manager; Casey Malmquist, general manager.GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
there’s been a lot of innovation,” Malmquist said.
SmartLam has taken the technical detail traditionally found in Europe- an CLT plants and married it with the American drive for production. And as the company grows, so will its workforce.
Already, SmartLam is working with Flathead Valley Community College on programs that could help produce a technically skilled workforce, and re- cently donated a few CLT panels to the wood shop class at Columbia Falls High School for a shed project.
“That shed’s probably going to be there for 500 years,” Malmquist said.
Though the company is experienc- ing success, Malmquist and Herman were quick to attribute it to the Flat- head Valley. From the beginning, there were the investors, the local workforce, public programs and timber companies cheering them on.
The manufacturing sector has also been stalwart, he said.
“It’s a tight-knit commu- nity,” Malmquist said. “And it’s just been buoyant.”
As for whether SmartLam will be one of the catalysts it takes to get the Flathead timber industry moving again, Malmquist said he’s hopeful the company will continue to grow and ex- pand in the valley.
“In order to be successful, it takes the entire community,” Malmquist said. For more information about Smart-
Lam, visit www.smartlam.com.
[email protected]
month, SmartLam sources its timber from logging companies within 200 miles of the plant. With the new facility, Malmquist and Herman said they ex- pected the output to at least quadruple, and maybe even more.
That also means the current amount of 36 full-time employees will likely double, Malmquist said, and with each of those jobs comes a ripple effect of oth- er jobs, such as the loggers or truckers carrying the product.
“It’s pretty significant,” he said.
One of the benefits of cross-laminat- ed timber is that its source is renewable, and Herman also noted that the current plant is waste free. The timber residu-
als are either sold as construction ma- terial for other value-added products or burned in the plant’s biomass heat- er, which it purchased with a $40,000 matching grant from the DNRC.
The sustainability of the cross-lam- inated panels is turning the heads of builders in the United States, Malmquist said, because they are more eco-friendly than a steel or concrete structure.
Really, when it comes to the applica- tions for these tough panels, the sky is the limit, Herman said; there are few, if any, preconceptions about what cross- laminated timber can do, he said, and that makes the possibilities endless.
“Dealing with something so new,
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