IFI Magazine Feb March 2019 International Forest Industries Magazine Feb March | Page 18

LUMBER PROCESSING NEWS
Roseburg Forest Products - new appointments
Roseburg Forest Products recently
announced that Mike Reardon has
been named Director of Industrial
Products Manufacturing, effective
Jan. 1, 2019. In his new role,
Reardon will oversee the entirety
of Roseburg’s Industrial Products
manufacturing structure. This is the
third promotion for Reardon since
he rejoined Roseburg in January
2017 as Plant Manager for the
company’s composite panel plant
in Simsboro, La. Reardon served
as plant manager for another
Roseburg facility from 2006-2009.
“In the past two years, Mike has
made a significant impact through
process improvements at Simsboro
and our other industrial products
plants,” Industrial Products
Business Director Jim Buffington
said. “After more than 30 years in
wood products, he brings a depth
and scope of experience to improve
and enhance oversight of our
operations.”
Mike Henry will replace Reardon
as Plant Manager at Simsboro
Composites, effective Jan. 14,
2019. Henry brings 25 years of
experience successfully managing
particleboard, MDF and TFL
Mike Henry will replace
Reardon as Plant Manager
at Simsboro Composites Mike Reardon has been
named RFP Director
of Industrial Products
Manufacturing
operations for companies including
Jeld-Wen, Del-Tin Fiber and
Arauco. He most recently served as vice president of operations
for Essential Cabinetry Group in
Greenville, S.C
Finland: Promise in new process for waste to energy
New technique based on
gasification “ VTT Technical
Research Centre of Finland Ltd
has developed a new technique
based on gasification, which
offers a sustainable way to turn
forest industry byproducts, such
as bark, sawdust and forestry
waste, into transport fuels and
chemicals. The new technique
reduces carbon dioxide emissions
by approximately 90% compared to
fossil fuels.
The new approach uses
gasification to turn biomass into
intermediate products - liquid
hydrocarbons, methanol or
methane - in production units
integrated with communal district
heating plants or forest industry
power plants. The intermediate
products are processed further in
oil refineries to make renewable
fuels or chemicals.
VTT developed and piloted
the new gasification process and
evaluated the competitiveness of
plants based on the technique in
the course of a recently concluded
project called BTL2030. The
distributed generation process
developed by the project team
makes efficient use of the energy
content of biomass. Approximately
55% of the energy content is
turned into transport fuels and
a further 20-25% can be used
to provide district heating or
to produce steam for industrial
processes. The new technique
reduces carbon dioxide emissions
by approximately 90% compared to
fossil fuels.
The process is based on VTT’s
low-pressure, low-temperature
steam gasification technology,
simplified gas purification and
small-scale industrial syntheses.
Thanks to the small-scale
approach, the heat generated
by the process can be used
throughout the year, and the
process can be fuelled with local
waste. Finland’s previous plans
have involved considerably larger
gasification-based diesel plants,
the raw material demands of which
could not have been satisfied with
locally sourced waste.
Focus on forest ownership at SkogsElmia
The new-generation forest owners
are increasingly managing their
own forests. At least as important
as the yield is to manage the
forests in a long-term and
environmentally sound way.
This approach will be in focus at
SkogsElmia, which will be held this
summer on 6–8 June 2019 in the
forest south of Jönköping.
If Elmia Wood is the whole
world’s forestry fair with a focus on
technology and innovations, then
SkogsElmia can be described as
the whole Nordic region’s forestry
fair. The overall theme of the fair
will be forest ownership, a topic
that affects everyone in the forest
in different ways – from forest
owners to machinery contractors to
forestry officials.
The fair’s theme will encompass
everything from ownership
transfer and forest management
to technology and logistics that
minimise ground damage. As
forest owners are making new
demands, forestry fairs are
becoming increasingly important
meeting places for the forest
industry’s various actors as well
as platforms for the development
of new products and services.
Smart digital technology is being
used more and more in forestry
too, and so visitors to the fair can
look forward to many innovations
and much new thinking among the
16 International Forest Industries | FEBRUARY / MARCH 2019
exhibitors.
SkogsElmia is held every fourth
year and attracts about 30,000
visitors and 300 exhibitors. The
new fair manager for SkogsElmia is
Mattias Pontén, a certified forester
with great expertise and solid
experience of the forest industry.
He takes up his post now in June.
“It will be a terrific experience
to be part of the forest industry’s
development,” he says. “Forest
ownership is a broad topic with
many different issues, which I care
greatly about as a forest owner
myself. One key focus right now
is sustainable forest management
with an eye to the future – a future
that will be strongly characterised
Mattias Pontén, Fair manager
for SkogsElmia,
by digitalisation and the links
between services and products.
We will fill SkogsElmia with
many relevant activities to
complement the exhibitors’ many
new products and services, and we
anticipate a fair that will benefit
everyone involved.”