Forest firm plants the seeds of consumer products

Tag : cutting oils

By NICK STEWART

From silviculture to soap, from cutting to carbon credits, onelong-time forestry firm is looking to diversify beyond its roots,which run deep through the dark Timmins soil.

With nearly 30 years of business experience under their belts, thefamily behind Millson Forestry Service is taking a baby step intothe realm of consumer products.

“We’re getting into non-traditional forestproducts,” says David Millson, who runs the company with hiswife, Sue.

“It’s not something we’re accustomed to, sowe’re learning as we go.”

Sticking to their area of expertise, the company is moving forwardon the use of balsam oil as the foundation for various products. With a wood allocation in the Romeo Mallette forest, the companycan make use of special processes to extract oils from balsam firtrees.

From there, the oils are used as an ingredient to provide strongnatural scents to products such as handmade soaps and other relatedproducts, which will initially be sold through the web. Discussionsare underway to bring the products to various local retailers.

The balsam oil will also be sold in bottled form, for use inaroma-dispersal devices, such as incense burners.

Millson says the company hopes to capitalize on niche marketscurrently dominated by other naturally-scented soaps and products,such as Burt’s Bees.

The company has also taken to selling what they refer to as“oxygen trees,” which Millson acknowledges is somewhatof a redundant moniker, since all trees produce oxygen. Still, thestronger public push for a cleaner conscience when it comes toenvironmental impact is driving the move, and interest in the“product” has been high.

Online calculators will be made available to allow concernedconsumers to calculate their projected “carbonfootprint” for a particular activity, and then calculate thetrees needed to offset that footprint. Millson Forestry will thenplant the trees on private land purchased for this purpose, andwill provide GPS coordinates to the buyer so that they can check upon their trees if they so choose.

Even for a firm that has regularly reinvented itself, this type ofconsumer-focused shift represents a big change for MillsonForestry, marking the first time it has offered products forgeneral sale.

The company began as a treeplanting firm after David and Sue firstmet in Lakehead University’s forestry program, married, andmoved to Timmins after graduation to kick off both their family andtheir firm in 1980.

Through the years, the company has moved from a treeplantingbusiness to one that prepares the planting sites and also harveststhe trees at the end of their cycle.

In the process, Millson Forestry hasn’t become the biggestsilvicultural firm in the province, but it is certainly one of theoldest. Their client list regularly includes many of the majorplayers in Ontario’s forestry industry, including Tembec,Buchanan Forest Products and Domtar.

Despite having grown and evolved since its inception, MillsonForestry is nevertheless seeing some challenging times as areflection of the forestry industry’s own difficulties.

Millions of dollars’ worth of equipment sits idle in theyard, and the company’s greenhouse is only being used at halfcapacity.

“This is the deepest and longest trough we’ve everseen,” David says.

“We see we’re in a changing mode, and we have to adaptto that. We can’t just sit and wait, so we’re tryingnew things.”

Still, hope remains strong at the heart of the Millson crew, as thepromise of further diversification and the power of renewableresources is helping to buoy their optimistic spirits.

While the company has up to 20 full-time workers at any given time,the operation has a strong sense of family at its core, due in nosmall part to the very real ties of kinship at its heart. In recentyears, David and Sue have also been joined in the business by theirdaughter Jenny, who followed in her parents’ footsteps as arecent graduate of Lakehead University’s forestry program.

In fact, it’s these ties that are helping to drive theMillson’s efforts to diversify in these challenging times.

“When Jenny came back, she brought along three young otherforesters with her,” David says. “At this point,we’re looking to the future, and we want to be able to besure that the business is there for them when we stepaside.”
www.millsonforestry.com