Lewis Mouldings gets cash for wood-waste fuel business

As the down of paper-making industry, wood processing industry is founding new ways to deal with sawdust and residues. As we all know, there are a large amount of wood residues produced in every minutes and every place. Why no take good advantage of them? A company has a good way to solve this problem. Especially in the winter season, demand for heating fuel is increasing.
 
A longtime Digby County wood trim manufacturer is growing another branch of its business with an injection of government cash. Lewis Mouldings and Wood Specialties Ltd. received $430,500 from the federal and provincial governments Monday to boost its wood briquette production. “There has been so much interest expressed to us from various geographical areas, including the States, for Fiber Fuel that we said, ‘OK, we have to do this,’ otherwise we were going to miss our chance,” Jamie Lewis, general manager of the company, said in an interview Monday.The family-owned Weymouth company launched Fiber Fuel wood briquettes in 2008 using leftover eastern white pine sawdust and chips from its wood trim business.
 
The product is sold at 50 dealers across the Maritimes, but the company has had to “put dealers on hold (because) we just haven’t been able to supply the product to them.”This new funding will help pay for the company’s second wood fibre compressing machine, which is already in operation, and its first biomass dryer to dehydrate wet wood byproduct the company is already generating, Lewis said.It now has two wood fibre compressing machines in operation, and the dryer should be up and running in November, Lewis said.

The new equipment has the potential to eliminate all the company’s wood waste and increase production of Fiber Fuel by 400 per cent, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency said in a news release.
While the company doesn’t expect to reach full capacity this season, Lewis said he hopes to see an increase in production from 1,000 pallets last year to 2,000.
The Lewis family has been in the lumber business for generations. With more than 75 workers, Lewis Mouldings, which mostly makes wood trim for windows and doors, is one of the largest employers in the region.
 
The company has continued to weather changes in the industry like the 2012 closure of Resolute Forest Products, the Queens County paper mill that used to buy its waste wood.
 Even back in 2008, “the writing was on the wall for the pulp (and) paper industry,” Lewis said. The company needed to find another way to get value for its leftover fibre, not only for the sake of profits but for the sustainability and longevity of the company.“Things weren’t good. We just knew we had to be proactive,” Lewis said. “So we’ve been trying to build Fiber Fuel and expand the brand, so to speak, to get to the place where we could make this kind of investment to meet the demand for it.”
 
The funding announced at a news conference Monday at the company’s 52,000-square-foot facility was a $307,500 repayable loan from the federal government and another $123,000 from the provincial Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Department to buy the equipment. The money comes as heating season approaches and the province is facing a firewood shortage. “It wasn’t timed in any way to coincide (with the reported shortage),” Lewis said. “It just highlights that here we are bringing a product to market that can fill something that’s obviously of demand. People want to continue to burn wood, they want the economy of wood.”
 
In April 2013, the company received a $1.2-million provincial loan guarantee to develop new products and expand its market, particularly in the U.S. “The things that we were shooting for are still developing, but they are occurring,” Lewis said. “We’ve done more business into the New England area this year than we did last, and that’s definitely been a byproduct of that deal with the province. And, frankly, we foresee it to be more next year than this year.” While the U.S. market is mainly interested in Lewis’s wood trim products, there are plans to also introduce Fiber Fuels as part of the company’s continued growth, he said.