Nestled off a narrow road five miles to the west of Fort William, Scotland, BSW Timber's Kilmallie Sawmill is situated in the shadow of Ben Nevis, the country's highest peak, and at the western end of the famous "Whisky Trail."
While the Kilmallie mill itself can't lay claim to a history as long and varied as the numerous distilleries that dot the trail, BSW Timber does have roots that date back more than 150 years. In 1997, Alexander G. Brownlie became the first member of the fifth generation of his family to enter the business, which was initiated in 1848 by James Weddell, in the town of Carluke, in Scotland's Lanarkshire County. In the 1850s, Weddell's timber company was taken over by two of his nephews, brothers Alexander and Robert Brownlie, and the company was named A&R Brownlie. In 1859, the pair set up their first sawmill in the Scottish Borders town of Earlston in Berwickshire County.
The company continued to grow through two world wars and remained as A&R Brownlie Ltd. until July 1988. At that time, the business became know as BSW Timber PLC through an expansion that brought them together with Thomas Smith and Sons (TSK) Ltd., and Western Softwood, a company the Brownlie family had purchased in 1980.
Today, BSW is the largest lumber producer in the United Kingdom (UK) with six mills throughout Scotland, England and Wales, one mill in Latvia, and corporate headquarters in Earlston. In total, the company produces 285MMBF (570,000 m3) annually. The Earlston office building, which houses BSW Timber's senior management, finance, administration and information technology staff, was built on the site of A&R Brownlie's original sawmill yard.
Multi-generation management in today's BSW Timber has extended beyond members of the Brownlie family, and some employees are working for the same company their father and grandfather worked for. This includes Scott Shiells, the company's Group Operations Manager, whose numerous responsibilities include implementing industry and group operational best practices in all of the company's mills, capacity planning, investment prioritization, and sawmill technology. Two of the facilities under Shiells' command are the Kilmallie operation at Fort William, and the nearby Boat of Garten mill, which is 70 miles northeast of Fort William.
Shiells grew up in the business. His great grandfather, Robert Shiells, worked in the timber industry, and his grandfather, Jack Shiells, and his father, Bob Shiells, followed in the timber business. Jack and Bob worked for A&R Brownlie, and Scott grew up on the site of the company's importing business near Edinburgh, before his father was transferred to the Boat of Garten mill. Bob Shiells became production director for the company until his retirement in 1993.
"We lived right across the street from the Boat of Garten sawmill, and I started working there when I was around 12 or 13 doing clean-up work," Scott explains. "I left school in 1985 and was hired on as one of the first saw operators to run what was then the newly installed canter quad line, and then worked my way up from there."
Shiells attributes his career choice to his family background and smiles broadly as he shares one of his father's favorite quotes. "My Dad would always say 'we have sawdust in the blood and there is no known antidote,' and I think he must have been right."
Of the two Northern Scotland mills, the Kilmallie mill is by far the largest, with production at 20MBF (40 m3) per hour, or just more than 46MMBF (93,500 m3) per year. The Boat of Garten mill produces 10MBF (20 m3) per hour, or 22MMBF (43,500 m3) annually. (In the UK, all lumber production numbers are measured in cubic meters with one cubic meter equal to approximately 500 board feet.)
Shiells, who has visited a number of North American sawmills, says in addition to the way the end product is measured, the biggest difference between sawmilling in the UK and North America is the lack of scanning and optimization equipment in UK mills.
"We tend to scan the logs in the yard and then they are batch processed," he explains. "I have probably seen more North American mills than most people in the UK industry, and as a consequence of those visits have tried to leave space during mill modifications for optimization to be added when the funds are available."
The Kilmallie mill was constructed in 1974 by Riddoch of Rothiemay Ltd., which was at that time the largest sawmilling company in Scotland. Riddoch was attracted to the area by the Arjo Wiggins pulp and paper mill that was situated directly across the road from the Kilmallie mill, which was a primary chip supplier to the pulp mill. In the early 1980s, Arjo Wiggins shut down the pulp side of its mill, eliminating the need for chips from Riddoch. In the mid 1980s Riddoch closed the mill due to financial difficulties and it was then purchased by TSK from the receiver.
BSW took control of the Kilmallie mill in 1988 as part of the merger that formed BSW and it proved to be a good fit with the Boat of Garten mill, which had been rebuilt in 1985. Operating two mills in close proximity helped the company survive a crisis in 1989, when the Kilmallie facility underwent major renovations after a fire destroyed much of the mill's electronics and waste handling area. The log yard and secondary manufacturing areas were saved and for three months the Boat of Garten mill was able to process much of the Kilmallie mill's primary wood during the rebuilding process, which allowed BSW to function without any interruption to the market.
"When the fire occurred, we already had plans on the drawing board for updating our secondary manufacturing process and the log yard," Shiells says. "After the fire, we also upgraded our primary processing by simplifying the flow and eliminating the bottlenecks."
Smaller changes at the mill in the late 1990s included the installation of a small tray sorter, and a new bark burner that replaced a wood waste boiler used for heating two kilns that had been installed in 1980. When Shiells took over the mill in 1998, the operation installed a stacker designed for cut-to-length pallet stock, and then later moved it to the company's Carlisle mill in England so that it would be closer to the manufacturing markets in North and Central England. This also created the necessary space at the Kilmallie mill to install a second drop sorter, a used Renholmen machine from Sweden that Shiells describes as a "second-hand Rolls Royce and one of the only machines by this manufacturer in the UK."
MILL FLOW
Today, mill flow at Kilmallie starts in the log yard where a Cat 962 front-end loader unloads trucks and either puts logs into rows that are sorted by length, or hot-loads the log sorting line if the mill happens to be running the length that has just arrived.
Once logs are loaded onto the log sorting line, they go through a butt reducer that eliminates butt flare, and are then kicked onto the main log sorting line where they go through a Valon-Kone 800/5 single debarker (800 mm maximum diameter, 31-32 in.). From the debarker, logs are sent through a fairly simple X-Y scanner manufactured by Sweden-based Rema Control AB and then to a Swedish built Hammars 32 bin sorter. Logs are separated into 20 different sorts for diameter and quality. From the sort bins, logs are moved to a sorted log area where a two-day supply for the mill is maintained.
Kilmallie's sales team works hand in hand with the production manager to determine how to optimize the logs in the sorted area and what order to load the mill. This information is passed on to the operator, who instructs a second Cat 962 operator to load the deck.
Any logs less than 20 cm (7-8 in.) in diameter are processed through a single canter prior to the Swedish-built AKE canter quad, followed by a homemade cant turner. Final cant breakdown is done on a triple band, also by AKE, followed by a Stenner horizontal band.
Larger logs are also sent through this line but miss out the single canter, and instead, merry-go-round the quad. Two older chipper-edgers process sideboards (16 mm to 25 mm). After the logs are processed, the product is sorted into battens (38 mm, 1.5 in., and above) and boards. The battens are sent through a Johansson trimmer and to a Hammars 45 bin crash sorter, and then to an Almab stacker. Boards are trimmed with a Gunnarson trim saw and then stacked with the Renholmen sorter and stacker.
Approximately 40% of the Kilmallie mill's product is kiln dried in one of two Hildebrandt progressive kilns that have the combined capacity to dry up to 22.5MMBF (45,000 m3) annually.
Any product that has been kiln dried is visually inspected and graded with rejects being resawn and higher quality product directed to a UK-made Compumatic MSR machine. Packages that require protection are wrapped with a woven product that is produced by Interwrap in Mission, BC and used in all of BSW's mills on kiln dried lumber and decking products.
Most of the product produced at Kilmallie is sold rough; however, when a planed product is ordered, the rough lumber can be shipped to the Boat of Garten mill where they have a Watkin planer. The Kilmallie mill also produces a variety of secondary products including garden furniture, fence posts, landscape ties, sheds, fencing and decking, along with the core product range of construction lumber. Many of the secondary products are sold directly to the public by the mill, or through arrangements with UK distributors and retailers. Thirty percent of the products produced by the Kilmallie mill stay in Scotland with the balance mainly sold in England. The only exception is chips, which are primarily shipped to Norway. Lumber products range in length from 2.4 m to 5.4 m., 6-16 ft., with 95% Norway or Sitka spruce, and the balance in larch. Board material ranges from 16 mm to 25 mm in 1.8 to 4.8 m lengths.
As for the future of the Kilmallie mill and sawmilling in the UK, Shiells sees more of a North American approach to the business.
"In North America it appears that technology is being used at the back end of the mill first, to ensure the customer gets an optimized product, plus there is a recognition that no two logs are the same, and once again the technology is helping to effectively treat every log as unique. In the UK, we tend to optimize our logs into groups at the start of the process and little investment in technology has been made beyond that, but that is changing and future investments, certainly at BSW, will aim to address this."
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