The winter of 1949-50 was unusually bitter in British Columbia’s fertile Okanagan Valley, one of Canada’s main apple-producing areas—so harsh that orchards, including those owned by the Gorman family, were frozen.

Looking for alternative ways to support their families after losing their crop, the Gorman brothers, John and Ross, along with their wives Edith and Eunice, began building and selling wooden fruit boxes, using trim ends they purchased from nearby sawmills and working out of a shed on their property.

In 1953 they set up their own small sawmill, with the first at Dobbin Mountain and then another behind Last Mountain, and launched Gorman Bros. Lumber. In 2017, recalling those early years, Ross Gorman wrote in Timeline Stories, “The logging was done by horse. We stayed at the camp because at that time it was too far to drive back and forth. There was no such thing as four-wheel drive, and the roads weren’t snow plowed as they are today.”

Much has happened since those days when Edith and Eunice supplied their husbands and the other camp workers with home baked bread and pies, and Eunice took care of the bookkeeping.

The Gorman Group

Today, the Gorman Group, created in 2008 after the John Gorman family sold their shares to the Ross Gorman family, is led by CEO Nick Arkle, Ross and Eunice Gorman’s son-in-law. The company directly employs 1,000 people, and also works with independent contractors.

High-value products from the Gorman Group are marketed and sold in 30 countries worldwide, including Canada, the U.S., Mexico, China, Japan, India, a number of Middle Eastern countries, several North African countries, and the UK.

In addition to the Gorman Bros. Lumber Company, which produces high-quality finishing boards made from white wood, mainly Lodgepole pine and spruce, the Gorman Group includes other wood product companies which the Gormans either established or acquired. Among them are Oroville Bin & Pallet; Lumby Pole Division (for cedar utility poles and Douglas Fir pilings); Downie Timber (for Douglas Fir, cedar and Western Hemlock specialty lumber); Selkirk Specialty Wood (providing cedar and hemlock boards); and Canoe Forest Products (offering plywood).

But no matter how many expansions or acquisitions have been made, the foundation of the Gorman Group remains the same: to get the highest value product out of each log that comes into the facility, and to let nothing be wasted.

Wanting to learn more, we recently enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with two long-time employees, Randy Hardy, a Registered Professional Forester (RPF), who works as a Planning Forester and Certification Coordinator for the Gorman Group; and Matt Scott, RPF, grandson of Ross and Eunice Gorman who also works as a Planning Forester with a focus on Indigenous relations and sustainable forest management.

Both men have fond memories of the Gormans, their humbleness, their work ethic, and their values. Hardy, who’s from Alberta and has been with the company for 30 years, told us that, “Ross Gorman envisioned a company where people stayed long-term because it would provide a really good working environment and a place where people could support their families.”

Scott, who grew up in Vancouver, recalls his grandfather as being “a very humble man, with no formal post-secondary education, who had been a farmer and then went into this business. He was a hard worker, worked until the day he went into the hospital at age 94. Right up to the end he was always concerned that the value of the wood was being maximized and nothing was wasted.” He also has fond memories of his grandmother, who worked alongside her husband, and who passed away a year ago at the age of 100.

Forest management—working with First Nations Elders

The Gorman Group operates in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Secwepemc, Sylix/Okanagan and K’tunaxa peoples. Scott says right from the beginning his grandfather wanted to work with First Nations people. He told them, “We’re all here for the long run, so we need to figure out how to work together.” That sort of approach has led to a variety of business arrangements with several Bands, all built on a strong land ethic and mutual respect.

This relationship, he says, has evolved significantly over time. Whereas in the beginning the discussion with First Nations was only about where the company wanted to log, now the approach is to involve First Nations in the entire process, where they are active in planning, processing, harvesting and reforestation to make sure all the values of the forest are accounted for.

“We work with the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keepers (TEKK), the Elders in the community who have historical knowledge of how to manage the forest that has been here for thousands of years, so we are incorporating that knowledge into our practices as we work with them as consultants,” explains Scott.

The Gorman Group also employs silviculture specialists, who prepare the sites for planting and who ensure that when the land is turned back to the province all legal obligations are met. Hardy noted that the company is also working with First Nations and other agencies on several ecological issues, including forest fire prevention, a research project on mule deer, and another project to enhance endangered caribou herds around the Revelstoke area.

The Gorman edge in quality

Each of the mills in the Gorman Group makes different products, Hardy explains, “so we focus on getting the right log to the right mill, just so we can utilize that log to its fullest potential. We have highly skilled, trained loggers who make sure that each tree they cut will be a fit with our products, and then send it to the facility that will get the best return on that log.”

The Gorman Group also partners with other companies who may be able to use a log that is not of suitable quality for a finished board but is still structurally sound, so that it can be used behind a wall as a 2 x 4 while retaining the finer logs for “appearance grade” products. No part of the log is wasted.

Over the 30 years Hardy has worked at Gorman, he says the company has continually upgraded its processing facilities to ensure they are state-of-the art and positioned to get the best recovery.

After the logs have been sorted, scanned and ‘squared up’, and approved for boards, they move to the technologically advanced Thin Kerf Edger, which has a series of extremely thin side-by-side saw blades that rip them into boards, thereby reducing the amount of loss of fibre as sawdust. Then a molder, designed for fine finish work, creates the furniture finish, splinter-free edge for which Gorman boards are known. Next, a Bioluma Grade Scanner looks for geometric shape analysis to ensure accurate grade sorting so that the boards can be rerouted to different finishing centres.

Finally, Gorman boards move to the drying kilns, which use a low temperature and a slow drying schedule to produce a more stable board than those dried in the industry standard high-temperature, fast-drying kilns. This process reduces warping and meets International Heat Treatment Standards.

All Gorman boards are then carefully graded to ensure builders are getting the right board for the project, and all are graded above NLGA and WWPA standards.

While the lumber industry, in general, is dealing with a reduced fibre supply, the Gorman Group respects the forest and the trees that are harvested by ensuring every part of the tree is used. For example, trims from finished lumber are collected to be manufactured into finger-jointed boards. Trim ends from cedar, in addition to being used for finger-jointed boards, are used to build planter boxes and raised garden beds, while narrow cedar boards have found a market in the culinary industry for planked salmon.

To further avoid waste, wood chips are used as raw material to produce pulp and paper, shavings and sawdust are used as animal bedding and as biofuel when converted into wood pellets, and the bark is used for landscaping or as renewable biomass energy.

Looking ahead

Overall, the forest industry, which contributes $13 billion to the B.C. economy, provides 100,000 jobs, annually plants 300 million trees, and has managed to reduce 40 percent of industry-related emissions, is facing huge challenges.

Wildfires are an ongoing issue for all logging companies. While we were speaking with Hardy and Scott, a fire just southwest of Penticton was burning partly in the Gorman Group’s operating area, and last year the company was impacted by fires in the Shuswap.

“After a fire comes through, we focus on burnt timber, rather than on harvesting green timber,” Scott said. “Trees still have a shelf life while standing dead, particularly Douglas Fir, because it has a thick bark to protect the wood inside from the fire. By harvesting those, we can replant and get the forest growing again,” he shares.

“The forest industry in B.C. is facing big challenges,” he continues. “There are wildfires, there’s a reduction in fibre supply, and there’s climate change, so there are a lot of challenges for us. However, we look forward to developing new products and producing optimal value from what we do harvest. We want to keep everyone working, and we want to adapt to the changing environment. That is the future for us.”

The post The Gorman Edge: Celebrating 70+ Years of Producing the Finest Boards<p class="company">Gorman Bros. Lumber Ltd.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

We caught up with ML Crane’s President Caroline Asimakopoulos in an executive airport lounge, on her return to company headquarters in Denver, after visiting some of the group’s strategically located 11 branches.

She explains how ML Crane—a part of ML Holdings which includes ML Utilities, ML Distribution Group, and ML Environmental Group—began in 2007 through the acquisition of two Crane Service Inc. locations in Albuquerque and Bloomfield, New Mexico. ML Crane grew solidly over the next 11 years by opening greenfield operations in areas such as Sweetwater, Texas, and through six additional acquisitions across Texas, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.

Reaching across industry
Although ML Crane is indeed a crane rental company, it is much, much more, with considerable expertise provided by its 500-plus employees. The company’s specialties include heavy lifting, rigging, heavy hauling, alternative movement, and warehouse / storage solutions, and it serves a broad range of industries with customized solutions and skilled operators.

Included in the spectrum is the renewable energy sector, as well as the refining and petrochemical sectors; power generation and distribution; HVAC / mechanical; infrastructure / maintenance, and building construction; and government, commercial and residential.

Asimakopoulos says that, last year, ML Crane’s business comprised 20 percent wind, 30 percent petrochemical, 40 percent construction, and 10 percent other.

“We want to continue to diversify both geographically and through our end-market segmentation,” she says. “Our recent expansion in renewables and petrochemicals has been as much about diversifying the type of work we are going after and geography, as it has been about the end-market segmentation.”

Cranes are used in refineries, which periodically must be completely shut down for maintenance and repair. The last major one the company serviced was in Illinois and used 38 cranes.

In the oil fields, cranes are used to build the drill rigs and for fracking, and on wind farms cranes are used not only to install the towers and blades, but throughout the life of the wind turbine on the farm. They are required when blades, gearboxes, and generators must be replaced or general maintenance done on the turbines.

“There are so many needs and uses for cranes. It’s an exciting time for us. There is a huge emphasis on renewables right now and we’re there to help that industry, but we also know oil and gas is not going away so we continue to invest there as well,” she says.

A part of something
Appointed President of ML Crane on August 5, 2021, Asimakopoulos had joined the company in 2018 as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations, bringing with her more than 20 years of experience in finance, accounting, and operations.

She had begun her career working for a smaller company “that was very entrepreneurial, but then we were bought out and became part of a large public company, and I didn’t want that,” she explains. “I wanted to be in a company where we could make big things happen, where we could make decisions and grow it.”

Following advice from a mutual friend, she interviewed with ML Holdings owners, Bob Matz, Chair, and David Matz, President. By the end of the interview, she knew she wanted to work with them, much of her decision to do with the entrepreneurial opportunities that were available.

“I wanted to be part of building something. My background and experience were a great fit to help move the company from being a series of branch-centric siloed entities, to an aligned company focused on growth, excellence, and customer service.”

Aligning an industry
Over the last three years, ML Crane has been on a journey to align under one vision and one set of core values.

“Our vision is to be the best partner for our customers and an employer of choice. The intent behind the multiple acquisitions had always been to capitalize on the strength of a larger company with more talent and equipment. However, we needed to stop treating each other as competitors to get there,” says Asimakopoulos.

“Today we are rebranding under ML Crane, and we partner with each other to give our customer the highest quality service experience. The result is that we can meet all our customers’ needs, whether setting a small air conditioner or moving a 600,000-pound transformer,” she explains. “We are not a crane rental company or a transport company. We are the partner that will help our customers find the best solutions for their lifting and transportation needs.”

ML Crane’s culture is focused on core values of safety, integrity, accountability, collaboration, and respect, which Asimakopoulos says are “not just on a poster on a wall.” It is the company’s firm expectation that leaders and team members will make decisions using those values. “That means,” she says, “there’ll be times when we make a choice that’s not the choice our customer wants; however, we’ll never compromise on the safety of our employees.”

Diversity pays dividends
In keeping with the company’s vision of being the best partner to its customers and employer of choice, she says it comes down to hiring the best people in the marketplace and this is where diversity comes into the equation. The company does not spell out a diversity policy, but always looks for talent from diversified backgrounds and perspectives. That can include different industry or business experience, gender diversity, and ethnic diversity.

While the crane industry does have fewer female employees than many others, that has changed in the last few years, and Asimakopoulos notes that the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association (SC&RA) recently announced they have launched a women’s executive round table.

“Research shows that companies with diverse leadership have better performance and our vision and goals will require that we continue to find the highest quality people regardless of gender,” she says.

The company owns most of its own equipment, which includes approximately 300 cranes across its network. When the cranes go out, they go with a qualified operator. Eighty-five percent of the company’s locations are unionized, which means employees are trained through the apprentice program at what Asimakopoulos calls “fantastic, state-of-the-art training centers.”

To ensure that the remaining 15 percent of non-unionized employees also receive training and achieve certification, the company has just opened a training center at its Albuquerque location, which includes training in rigging, signaling, and crane operation.

“In my experience in the automotive industry, specific continued training and certification is provided as part of the normal operations, but this is something the crane industry has not done well. People in the crane industry have said to me that they don’t want to pay for training because they had to pay for their own and don’t want to pay for someone who may leave their company to work for another. But we flipped that upside down. We are going to pay for people while they train, and to the industry people who say, ‘but what if they leave?’ we say, ‘what if we don’t train them and they don’t leave?’”

Re-connecting
As pandemic restrictions lift, Asimakopoulos is pleased that company representatives are now attending trade shows, something in which ML Crane had only limited participation until industry veteran John Rowe was hired as Chief Commercial Officer and Marilyn Wilkes joined as Marketing Specialist.

“There are probably hundreds of conferences and shows we could attend,” Wilkes says, “so we need to make sure we get out what we put in and go to the ones that will benefit us, the ones where we can build solid relationships. Typically, we attend about eighteen annually, in the Gulf Coast and Mid-Atlantic Regions,” she shares.

“As well as meeting customers, you also make strong industry connections,” she adds. “We are in competition with a lot of other companies at the shows, and yet there are times when you have to reach out to your competition for help and they may need to reach out to you as well. Industry events are a very good way to make these connections and build strong relationships.”

The future is bright
The company has outlined a three-year plan intended to double its size, to be accomplished through both organic growth and acquisition. This involves geographical expansion, such as the two new greenfield locations in Houston, Texas, which recently opened, and Iowa, which is coming soon, and the development of new divisions.

Renewables, heavily focused in Colorado, have already tripled the company’s wind-energy business since last year, while the Capitol Projects division will focus on complex engineering projects, including construction of structures such as bridges and airports.

At ML Crane, all the pieces of the business puzzle—acquisitions and diversification; training and education; relationships and customer service—are interlocked, ensuring success for this company which is building the future.

The post A Nationwide Lift for the Crane Industry<p class="company">ML Crane</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Getting it wrong
It’s a little-known fact, but in early 19^th century England, women, along with girls and boys as young as five or six, worked underground in coal mines in deplorable conditions, for up to twelve hours a day, and, of course, for lower wages than their menfolk.

A colliery disaster in 1838, in which 26 children died, came to the attention of Queen Victoria who ordered an inquiry, which resulted in the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842, forbidding women and girls to work underground, along with boys younger than ten.

The results of this Act of Parliament, aimed at protecting women and children, had, in hindsight, some negative effects. In the short term, by not allowing women to work underground, economic hardship was worsened. A better solution would have been to legislate safe working conditions for both men and women and to introduce child labour laws.

In addition, arguments used to pass the act negatively influenced society’s ideas about women working in male-dominated fields for years to come. It seems the Act was less about concern for the safety of women and girls than it was about their role in society. To get the Act through the House of Lords, where some members who owned mines opposed it, Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper appealed to Parliament’s prudery.

Instead of focusing on the working conditions which were equally unsafe for women or men, he focused on “girls and women wearing trousers and working bare-breasted in the presence of boys and men, which made girls unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers.”

It should be noted, however, that the actual report mentioned only one woman working bare-breasted – because of the heat – and that most of the women were already wives and mothers.

But it was variations on these notions that pervaded the resource sectors on both sides of the Atlantic through the rest of the 19^th century, on into the 20^th, and even into the 21^st. No matter whether it was forestry, oil and gas, or minerals, even when other sectors of the economy were making strides toward gender equality and diversity, natural resources lagged behind the prevailing trend.

Simply put, they were male-dominated industries and women didn’t fit. But that was then, and this is now, and in the 21st century, women’s presence in those fields is on the rise, albeit slowly.

What the stats say
By the Numbers: Gender Diversity in Canada’s Natural Resource Industries and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), a document published by Statistics Canada in 2015, reveals that while progress has been made, it has not kept pace with other sectors.

Despite progress since the 1980s, women holding positions in STEM remain a minority. In 2011, women comprised 66 percent of graduates in non-STEM subjects, but only 39 percent in STEM. By 2014, only 22 percent were still working in STEM fields.

Natural Resources Canada faced a similar gender imbalance, notably among researchers, with only 19 percent being women.

While women account for nearly half of the national labour force (47 percent in 2015) women’s share of employment in the forestry, mining, and oil and gas industries remains under 20 percent, with 70 percent of those women working in business and financial roles. And, although average weekly wages for women in these sectors have increased, women are still under-represented in high-earning leadership roles.

It’s also interesting to note how women’s participation has evolved differently across the primary sub-sectors of forestry, oil and gas extraction, and mining. Between 1996 and 2011, employment opportunities in the forestry sector dropped significantly; however, the proportion of women working in it increased from 9 percent to 15 percent. The number of women working in mining between 1996 and 2011 increased by similar amounts, from 10 to 14 percent.

The oil and gas extraction sector, however, presents an anomaly. In 1996, it was by far the smallest of those three sectors in terms of employment numbers, but women accounted for 27 percent of employees. By 2011, that sector had doubled in size, outstripping both other sectors, but women still only accounted for 28 percent. What was going on?

Before taking a closer look at an international initiative to address gender diversity, we want to introduce Sarah Morse, who has worked as a geotechnical engineer since 2000, and who graciously agreed to describe her career trajectory and the challenges she faced.

Meet Sarah Morse, P. Eng., PMP, Senior Geotechnical Engineer
Throughout school, Morse was more interested in STEM subjects than in the humanities, so engineering seemed a natural choice at the University of British Columbia. She considered civil engineering – “I wanted to build bridges,” she says – before geological engineering captured her interest.

About 20 percent of classmates in first-year engineering were women, although stats showed that in 1996, while Morse was studying, only 10 percent of mining sector employees were female. Once she switched over to geological engineering, the class was much smaller, and out of 20 graduates, four were female. Three women, including Morse, have continued to work in the field.

“The work was challenging but not too hard,” she says. “Some students were friendly toward me, and some weren’t accepting, but you learn to stay away from those people and manage.

“I was quite shy, and I found it intimidating to speak with the professors, but I think that was just me. I don’t think they were doing anything that wasn’t inclusive. Students were there to succeed, or not, and it wasn’t their job to help you along.”

Numerous studies in every field of career development have shown the importance of role models and mentoring, but Morse says there were none when she was younger. “When I got further into my career, I had some role models I could look up to, but not in the early times, so it was all about forging my own path,” she says.

“What I found has changed over the last 22 years that I have been doing this work, is that while there aren’t necessarily any more women entering engineering, there are definitely more senior women. When I started there were none. Now there are and that is a big change.”

Student summer jobs, however, were important in her professional development. Her first was as a field assistant for a consulting company that was assessing soils and terrain stability in forested areas so that a forestry company could decide where to build access roads. Then she spent two summers in Fort McMurray, Alberta with one of the oil sand mining companies, “working in the engineering department, doing drawings for tailing sands and dam stability.”

Together with company engineers, she met on-site with construction monitors who required an opinion regarding the soil that was being brought in to construct the dams if they suspected that a change in moisture levels would affect soil stability. This involved soil analysis and an assessment of the design of the slope to rule out any ensuing environmental issues. “The work was hard, and the days were long, but it was a good community to work in,” she says.

Hard work and a positive attitude stood Morse in good stead in 2000, when upon graduation from UBC, she applied to work in the Vancouver office of an international consulting company. Although the interview went well, she says they were hesitant to hire her, “because I am a woman, and at five feet, a very small woman.”

She ultimately landed the job, because “someone in the company was really good friends with my summer position supervisor, but if it hadn’t been for his glowing recommendation, they probably wouldn’t have hired me.”

She did construction monitoring for tailings dams for that company for three and a half years, similar work to what she’d done as a co-op student, but on her own, without support from a senior engineer. “I would head out to the mines to tell the men who were constructing the dams they were doing it wrong,” she laughs. “They were used to engineers telling them that, and it wasn’t the first time they’d had a young engineer, but it was the first time they had a young female engineer in a position of authority. So it required me to be a lot more confident about my decisions than I truly felt.”

Morse was assigned her own projects, mines in Montana, Washington, and the B.C. interior, which she visited regularly. There were also opportunities to go to such places as Cuba, Romania, and South America, “but they didn’t send me, and I feel that was partly because I am a woman and there were safety risks associated with those places, so I never went even though more junior male engineers did.” Still, she calls the consulting company a great place to work and would have stayed had she not relocated to be with her husband.

There she joined another international consulting company in their infrastructure department, doing “a little bit of mining work, but mostly things like roads and buildings associated with the resource sector and other development areas.”

Three years ago, after working there for 16 years, Morse resigned, “as it didn’t seem to be a welcoming place for senior women, and I didn’t see a good path forward for my career,” and accepted a position as Senior Geotechnical Inspector with the B.C. government. There she works as part of a team of seven geotechnical engineers, four of whom are women, including a classmate from her graduating class at UBC. “I feel we are doing good work and we review each other’s work,” she says. “We do mine inspections, and we review permitting applications and technical documents submitted by the companies.”

Were it not for COVID restrictions, she would be spending approximately one week per month away from home at the mine sites, something she feels comfortable about now that her sons are growing up.

Morse takes pride in knowing that “the materials being mined in B.C. are critical to moving forward with clean energy, with electric vehicles and solar energy, because some of the required components, such as copper, need to be extracted from the ground. At the same time, the mines are working toward becoming more efficient and using more renewable energy for their activities.

“We are moving forward, helping to make mines more efficient and environmentally friendly, and a big part of that is ensuring the mines and the dams that are constructed are safe, and that we are safe in everything we do.”

Equal By 30 – advancing diversity and inclusion in the energy sector
Two years ago, just as the pandemic struck, Natural Resources Canada launched Equal By 30, an international initiative to advance both gender and ethnic diversity in energy under the umbrella of the Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) International Initiative. Involved are over 135 energy companies and 12 national governments, including Sweden, which has taken a leading role, along with Canada, the U.K., the U.S., France, and Japan.

Research conducted by Diversio, the Toronto-based platform that tracks and improves diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and applied to Equal By 30, indicates that to meaningfully advance diversity, it’s important to focus on five inclusion metrics: the development of an inclusive culture where everyone feels valued; fair and unbiased management practices; career development; workplace flexibility; and workplace safety, which means ensuring that no employees are experiencing sexual, psychological, or physical harassment (see www.equalby30.org and www.efficiencycanada.org for more).

In the Canadian context, being Equal By 30 refers to three goals as articulated by Efficiency Canada, the national voice for an energy-efficient economy, housed at Carlton University. The goals include equal pay and equal leadership, with 50 percent of leadership roles held by women, and equal opportunities through the creation of policies to support flexible work hours, telecommuting, and part-time work, all of which should be accomplished by 2030.

Equality and diversity in the resource sector have been a long time coming. Now it’s on the horizon, while at the same time questions surrounding energy sustainability are more critical than ever before. We hope, by working together, women and men can bring their own perspectives to the table to solve the most pressing issues facing our planet.

The post Women on the Rise<p class="company">Challenge and Opportunity in the Resource Sector</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Or, if you’re choosing to purchase high quality tissue products, manufactured in the U.S., you may be equally surprised to learn they too began life in a forest, not in New Brunswick, but in northern Ontario, and processed at an AV Group-owned mill in Terrace Bay on Lake Superior.

Integrated supply chain management, superior quality products, sustainability – AV Group Canada, Inc., with a corporate office in Fredericton, NB, and pulp mill operations in Atholville and Nackawic, NB and Terrace Bay, Ontario, is ticking all the right boxes.

Mike Legere, the company’s Director of Government Relations and Communications, describes the path to success of the ubiquitous AV Group, which is the Canadian presence of the Aditya Birla Group of Mumbai, India.

Iconic history
The lineage of the AV Group can be traced back to no less a luminary than Mahatma Gandhi. This deeply revered visionary was well connected with India’s business community and felt strongly that it was essential for a nation to be economically self-sufficient – to be able to feed and clothe all its citizens.

Gandhi was a close confidante of G. D. Birla, the foremost industrialist of pre-independence India. Gandhi’s ideas about the economy may well have influenced Birla to research and develop methods of producing cellulosic fibre from plants other than cotton. This was when the formation of the new state of Pakistan was threatening the supply of raw cotton that fed India’s mills.

And so it was that 75 years ago the Aditya Birla company formed a subsidiary, Grasim Industries Limited, just as India gained independence from Great Britain in August 1947 and underwent the traumatic process of partitioning.

In the beginning Grasim used bamboo as its main resource for the production of cellulosic fibre (MMCF), but later began using hardwood to produce viscose staple fibre (VSF).

Today, Grasim Industries Limited is the parent company of AV Group and the flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group. Legere describes Aditya Birla, led by K. M. Birla, great-grandson of G. D. Birla, as a global conglomerate with annual revenues of over $48 billion. More than half of this revenue comes from 50 overseas companies established in 36 countries in five continents. The group has over 140,000 employees representing 42 nationalities.

What’s remarkable about the company, Legere shares, is that it “strives to be in the top three of any industry it has invested in, including agri-business, cement, telecommunications, carbon black, aluminum rolling, textiles, and the pulp and fibre business, in which it is first in the world, and of which the AV Group is an integral part.”

From deep in a forest
As Grasim Industries grew, it needed to solidify its supply chain. It turned its attention to the six million hectares of forestland in New Brunswick, comprising coniferous (softwood), mixed, and deciduous (hardwood) forests, with the latter containing a plentiful supply of the preferred grey bark species, including aspen, maple and birch.

Thus, AV Group was formed as one of four companies in the province licensed to manage forests, on crown lands as well as on industrial free-hold land, and harvest wood from them.

“When we speak about an integrated supply chain, it starts with us,” Legere explains. “We have control over the actual trees, how they grow, and what supply there will be for the future. Our professional foresters look 80 years ahead, to make sure we are managing our supply to have a sustainable input for our mills.”

But that’s only half the New Brunswick story as the harvested wood has to be processed into dissolving-grade pulp. This was achieved by the company’s acquisition of a pulp mill in Atholville on the Quebec border in 1998.

Then, in 2006, the company acquired a second kraft pulp mill in Nackawic on the Saint John River, 60 km northwest of Fredericton, site of the corporate office.

Both mills were facing serious market issues when Birla bought them up, with the Nackawic mill in receivership. Grasim invested heavily to convert them to dissolving-grade pulp mills to supply the required product for viscose staple fibre production which is one of several steps in fabric production.

“For dissolving pulp the cooking process differs from regular pulp,” Legere tells us. “It’s a chemical process where we cook a mixture of hardwood pulp species in the digester at the Nackawic mill, while the Atholville mill (AV Cell) processes about a 50/50 mix of softwood and hardwood.” The precise cooking process is what differentiates products such as viscose, lyocell, and modal.

The two New Brunswick mills combined produce about 300,000 tons of dissolving-grade pulp annually, which exits the mills in the form of two-foot square sheets resembling thick, coarse blotter paper, baled and unitized for container transport.

From there, it’s transported to the ports of Saint John and Halifax, and shipped in containers to Grasim-owned facilities in India, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. There the bales of cellulose are dissolved, reconstituted into VSF and sent down the supply chain to be spun into thread, and woven into cloth, before going to apparel and home-textile manufacturers, and finally, to retail outlets.

Since its establishment in New Brunswick, the Birla Group has added a dissolving-grade pulp mill in Domjo, Sweden (2011) and the kraft mill in Terrace Bay, Ontario in 2012.

This latter has remained as a traditional kraft pulp mill producing over 350,000 tons of northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK).

The company ships this primarily by rail to customers throughout the U.S. midwest and as far south as Georgia and Florida, where it is converted into a variety of personal hygiene and domestic tissue products and graphic paper.

Superior products
Legere says that what makes clothing and domestic textiles produced from New Brunswick forests and mills superior is the abundance of maple wood and the cellulose extraction abilities of the mills, which is important because the quality of the product depends on the purity of the alpha cellulose.

Extremely high-grade alpha cellulose goes into Birla Modal, which is more expensive than other forms of the fabric and highly sought after by fashion designers for its natural fluidity. “Birla Modal is particularly good,” he says, “because it holds colour fast, it drapes the nicest of any material, and with its high lustre it’s the closest to actual silk but performs better.”

Other products include Birla Excel and Birla Viscose made from cellulosic fibre provided by AV Group and which go into both woven and non-woven products. Manufacturers use these in a wide variety of apparel items – pants, shirts, denims, knitwear, and more utilitarian items such as uniforms. The woven fabric is also used in home textiles, including bed and bath linens, furnishings and floor covers.

“Eventually,” he says, “some will return to North America in the form of a recognizable fashion house or brand, such as Target, Marks & Spencers, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Victoria’s Secret, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, or J. C. Penney. All those are key brands that use Birla Cellulose products.”

Meanwhile, non-woven VSFs, branded under the Birla ‘Purocel’ line, are used in medical textiles, such as surgical gowns and masks, linens to cover patients, disposable diapers, and various types of wipes. “In fact, they’re used in a whole myriad of industrial products, including filter material,” he says.

Changing the focus to tissue and the superiority of the product that the Terrace Bay kraft mill supplies to U.S. manufacturers, Legere indicates that tissue quality depends on the quality of the pulp that goes into it and the mix of hardwood for smoothness and softwood for strength.

“Our native black spruce in Ontario’s boreal forest is well-suited in terms of the strength of the fibre extracted from it. And most of the wood chips used are residual by-products of sawmills producing lumber, so we contribute to full utilization of the forest resource – no waste.” Legere adds that, “Recycled content in tissue is a consumer option but there is a quality impact on the end product as fibre quality degrades the number of times it is repulped.”

Sustainable outcomes
Legere explains that, “Sustainability is key to every aspect of the supply chain, starting with the woodlands.”

In New Brunswick the forests which supply wood to the mills in Atholville and Nackawic are sustainably managed by AV Group, which employs professional foresters and manages forests to supply wood to dozens of other mills as well across the province.

In Ontario, AV Group contributes to the management of many of the forests which supply the Terrace Bay mill through a unique First Nation-industry partnership, Ogwiidachiwaning Sustainable Forest Management (OSFMI). It is a corporate body composed of First Nations and forest sector companies that manages nearly two million hectares of the Kenogami Forest, under FSC certification, on the shores of Lake Superior.

Legere describes this as an important business relationship that was years in the making and demonstrates meaningful economic reconciliation with First Nations. “The inclusion of indigenous knowledge and perspective into our forest management strengthens sustainable outcomes.”

AV Group has received third party certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI). It holds both forest management and chain of custody certification from those international organizations, and has particularly focused on increasing its number of FSC chain-of-custody certifications.

“The latter, chain of custody, is important because we purchase wood from outside companies, and we need to ensure sustainability of the source of our supply externally as well as internally,” he says. Taking this further upstream, the Birla ‘Livaeco’ brand of fabric uses a molecular tracer and block chain technology to trace the origins of a garment all the way back to the forest and how it was managed.

“Sustainability starts in the woodlands, but it moves up through the pulping process, where we are regulated in terms of emissions and reduction of our carbon footprint. We derive, on average, for all sites, about 90 percent of heat and power from renewable energy sources,” says Legere.

Taking responsibility to the next level
“We also recover most of our pulping chemicals through a closed loop recovery boiler system and reuse non-contact water [water that has not been mixed with any chemicals but rather used for process cooling] which is standard procedure today in the industry.”

These careful procedures and emphasis on responsible use are a source of pride, not only for the woodlands team, but also for the AV Group and parent company Grasim, allowing them to brand end products as sustainably sourced.

“We want to give people confidence that the shirt or blouse they’re wearing, or the towel in their bathroom, was produced sustainably from both an environmental and a governance standpoint,” he says.

Moreover, not only are the apparel and home textile products sustainably sourced, unlike synthetics manufactured from fossil fuels, but they are biodegradable and so will not create long-lasting environmental problems.

The Birla Group has received a number of accolades and recognitions for sustainability; has been recognized by the UN for its VSF operations in India; and in 2021, was again recognized as Number 1 in the Hot Button Report from Canopy, an environmental, non-profit organization that rates companies that produce MMCF. Meanwhile, AV Group has been rated one of the top employers in Atlantic Canada (2017) and included in the Career Directory’s list of Canada’s Best Employers for Recent Graduates (2020).

This must surely be a direct result of the company’s mission to pursue excellence in people, process, and product by providing training and education opportunities, technological advances, and community partnerships.

The post From Forest to Fashion<p class="company">AV Group Canada</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

With a fleet of four fully-crewed offshore and inshore vessels and an experienced technical team, LeeWay Marine, based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in Halifax Harbour, is Atlantic Canada’s leading marine data-acquisition service company.

Greg Veinott, Director of Operations, speaking from the company office in the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE) tells us the company was founded in 2015 by CEO Jamie Sangster, who chose the company’s name to reflect its role.

“Lee,” is a nautical term, he says, that refers to an area of the sea which provides safety from high wind and waves because it is protected by a landmass to the windward, while the full name “LeeWay” references the vessels’ ability and scope for moving easily and efficiently. These are qualities that the clients – whether governmental or private – who charter them to conduct surveys or do research, value highly.

Sangster, he tells us, brought to the business twenty years’ experience in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) as a marine system engineering officer and naval architect, along with extensive experience aboard major Canadian warships. Other team members also have relevant experience; some with the RCN, including Mark Decker, Vice President of Fleet Readiness, who served for 23 years as a marine engineer and radiation safety specialist.

LeeWay Marine maintains a staff of 10 on the management side, and at peak working periods, depending on the contracts it has received, could have crews at sea numbering from 20 to 45.

Welcome aboard
Veinott describes LeeWay Marine as filling a market niche, explaining that, while there are other companies doing similar work, most of them are international companies with massive ships doing large energy and pipeline projects. There are also some very small companies doing diving and construction site work that mainly operate within Halifax Harbour.

“But we have taken the position that we don’t want to be a local company and we have a vision of operating on a national or even international scale. For example, we have been operating off the east coast of the U.S. for the past two years, doing survey work for offshore wind installations, but we’re not at the scale of the large multi-national corporations. We straddle that gap between the small local companies and the multi-nationals.”

As a part of its strategy, LeeWay Marine maintains a mixed fleet of vessels. The LeeWay Odyssey was the first ship to be acquired and remains its largest research vessel, capable of competing for survey work on an international scale. It is a 38-metre, all-aluminum oceanographic vessel with a beam of 7.6 metres, a cruise speed of 12.5 knots and is outfitted for year-round coastal services.

“The Odyssey helped us build the company to where it is today,” Veinott says, “but it is old-school, built in the Seventies with diesel propulsion and mechanical operations, and our vision has always been in the direction of electrification; more efficient power plants on motorized vessels that can get to sites faster, so clients can get the work done faster, which makes it cheaper for them.”

In addition to electrification, the company is looking toward autonomy aboard the vessels, either the vessels themselves or some of the operations aboard.

A modern fleet
Two game changers for LeeWay were the acquisitions of LeeWay Striker in 2019 and RV Novus in 2021.

With a top speed of 55 knots, and cruise speed of 30 knots, LeeWay Striker is the world’s fasted research and hydrographic survey vessel. It has a 500 nautical mile range and can accommodate multi-day operations with six berths for crew and scientists.

RV Novus, designed and constructed by Abeking & Rasmussen of Germany, with a top-speed of 16 knots and a survey speed of 5 knots, is a state-of-the-art SWATH (Small-Waterplane-Area Twin Hull Vessel) with extraordinary seakeeping abilities. Its design supports near-to-mid shore survey operations for charting and mapping, offshore wind development, cable inspection, fish stock assessments and benthic surveying.

“These vessels really underscore the push toward autonomy on board and toward more efficient operations,” Veinott says. “Striker is extremely fast and able to get to the site and do the work way more efficiently than a large boat like Odyssey. It’s also a highly digitalized vessel, and allows us to monitor key control systems, such as the engines, from shore,” he explains.

“RV Novus is about achieving efficiency with power plants. It’s a diesel/electric vessel which allows us to do tests and trials with new technologies that move the vessel toward being fully electric. That’s a big win for us, as there’s no vessel elsewhere doing what we do that is fully electric.”

Rounding out the fleet is the LeeWay Venture, a lightweight, 7-metre patrol vessel, designed for near shore survey and support work. It’s small and light enough to be loaded onto a trailer and driven around to the Bay of Fundy, for example, to tackle tasks for commercial and government clients, centred around the deployment of sensors that track changes in marine ecosystem health.

In addition, LeeWay Marine crews and manages a fifth vessel, the Ocean Seeker, which is owned by Kraken Robotics, a company focused on the development of high-coverage, high resolution sensors for capturing seabed imagery.

Ocean technology trials and testing
In the beginning, the company’s focus was on ocean technology as Sangster saw a role that Odyssey could play in an already-existing market which involved testing and trialling ocean technology equipment.

“It’s what we cut our teeth on,” Veinott says. “We were surrounded by a number of new technology companies that needed to test and trial equipment, so that was our core business for the first couple of years, but it’s since become a supporting market. Our core business now is surveying, although we still test and trial in the off-season.”

During this season, November to April, LeeWay Marine works with ocean technology companies which have developed equipment in labs, but need to test its operational abilities before proceeding to production.

“We’re able to assist tech start-ups work through issues they may not have thought of. They may have great ideas, but there could be barriers in the design that hinder deployment or recovery from the water. Developers need sea time to prove their designs and ensure operability of their equipment in real sea states.”

Hydrographic & geophysical surveying
Surveying and mapping the seabed is at the core of LeeWay’s operations – important work relied upon by both government and industry. Governments use the data for navigational charts, for fish stock assessments, and for developing and regulating marine environmental policies. Industry, on the other hand, needs knowledge of the seabed to know where to install offshore infrastructure or lay cables.

As a result of flexible, modular designs, clients chartering one of LeeWay’s vessels for research and data collection can request a wide range of equipment layouts and deployment options. For instance, should the survey involve both shallow and deep water, the comparatively large LeeWay Odyssey can provide LeeWay Venture with transportation to the survey field on its deck.

For the past two summers, LeeWay has had two vessels working off the coast of New England, doing survey work for the first commercial-scale wind installations in North America.

“[North America is] 20 years behind Europe, especially the UK [in terms of offshore wind power],” Veinott says, “but now it is projected to be a huge market all the way from Maine down to South Carolina. The eastern seaboard states are all proposing various types of wind power and we see that in the next 10 to 15 years there will be work for us.”

Working 15 to 20 nautical miles offshore, surveyors use various sensors to measure water depth, to search for contour lines so boulders won’t get in the way of cable lines, to bring up samples of the seabed and if suitable for installation, penetrate the seabed up to 30 meters to locate the perfect spot to drill down and put in place pilings for turbines.

When turbines are up and running, there could be further work for LeeWay, as the company would be well-positioned to transfer inspection and maintenance crews out to the turbines.

In ocean research, LeeWay has conducted several explorations with non-profit groups, including a three-week expedition with Oceana Canada in the Labrador Sea in 2019.

The purpose of the expedition was to develop a marine protection plan for that area. The project began by working with the indigenous communities to grasp the size and diversity of the habitats around the Nain Region of Labrador and further north along the coast in Nunatsiavut.

“We were putting cameras down to the seabed and we could drag cameras along it so we could see exactly what’s down there and try to understand the habitat better,” Veinott says. “The part of the expedition that was interesting to us and the crew on-board was having indigenous people connect with science personnel as they worked together to put science and local knowledge and understanding all in one package.”

Defence is another component of the company’s business, but because of the company’s naval connection, Veinott says it’s an exciting opportunity for the team.

“We have taken on deployments with the Navy, as well as the RCMP and NATO forces. We’ve been a target vessel in exercises, and they had to track us down and we had helicopters dropping people on board and others learning how to bring a Zodiac alongside and climb aboard.”

Final thoughts
So, what’s it like to be part of LeeWay Marine? That’s a question we put to Veinott, a Certified Project Manager who came to his position three years ago with a business degree from Dalhousie University, a background in business development, market research and marketing, but no ocean experience, unlike the rest of the team. Still, it seems he acquired his “sea legs” quickly.

“I love it here,” he says. “We are a small but mighty team, the work is challenging in a good way, and everyone has each other’s back. I could have gone into banking or finance, but I am much happier here working with innovative people who push the envelope.”

The post What Lies Beneath<p class="company">LeeWay Marine</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Located in Quispamsis, NB, not far from the port city of Saint John, The Smart Energy Company is a member of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, and the province’s leading solar developer, whose projects account for over 50 percent of all grid-tied solar installations in New Brunswick.

The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Mark McAloon, with a vision, the company says, to “accelerate the world’s transition to clean energy” and a mission to “create the most compelling renewable energy packages for commercial enterprises globally.”

To learn more about this impressive vision and mission, we spoke with McAloon who explained that the company had begun as a residential solar energy business, “but because I am an entrepreneur by definition, I am always looking to see what we can do to grow the company, where there’s a need, and what we can offer that has value.”

A need for new ideas
A major issue for homeowners attempting to achieve solar-energy efficiency and predictability, he learned, stems from placement of the panels on the roof. The energy generated for one home may be quite different from that generated on a neighbour’s roof, either because the panel had to be placed in a different position in relation to the sun or because of differences in the roof’s pitch.

But, he realized early on, “if you take solar panels off the roof and put them on the ground, you have much better control of the panel and can optimize the angle it is facing into the sun.”

And that’s not the only benefit, because if the solar array is installed on the ground there is the option of utilizing bi-facial solar panels which produce electricity from both front and back of the panel, angled to get maximum light hours. The end result is considerably higher efficiency and predictability than most roof-top systems achieve.

However, while ground solar arrays were impractical for small residential urban lots, they could be eminently suitable for spacy rural areas, and of particular value to farmers.

This is where McAloon turned the company’s attention in 2017, engaging in research and development and partnering with community leaders, all of whom were intrigued by the potential of solar as a viable option.

Designed to work here
For the company’s first large-scale solar utility project, no equipment was available in Atlantic Canada, so it was all purchased from outside the province.

“But after a year of operating we found that we had to replace many of the components and modify the system. We modified it so much that there was barely anything left of the original system. We were forced to innovate and become more of an engineering firm, taking a product and learning how to design it to work in our environment.”

The products had to be modified structurally to withstand the north-east gale-force winds and still be attractive. Howling winds weren’t the only problem, either, because the wet and sticky snow of Atlantic Canada’s long winters threatened electrical components.

The solution was the NOREASTER®, a ground-installed solar-energy system specifically designed to withstand all that wind, snow, and freezing rain. But that wasn’t all. The system was also designed to make it easier for farmers, who are used to setting up generators themselves, to assemble the system on site, since the NOREASTER® is really just an electrical generator powered by sunlight instead of diesel.

Farmers can order a package online, receive all the materials, components, and instructions, and assemble the entire system themselves up to the point of commissioning it and connecting it to the grid, which requires a certified installer.

Going global
An added plus of NOREASTER’s® portability is that it can be marketed and sold not only regionally but nationally and internationally, bringing McAloon’s mission to be a global supplier a step closer to reality. “It’s really a solar farm in a box,” he says.

Today a number of New Brunswick farms, including dairy and cattle farms and greenhouse operators whose owners were looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, are utilizing the NOREASTER’s® power and reliability.

One example is McCrea Farms, an eighth generation New Brunswick family farm. Since John McCrea arrived in Shannon, NB in 1821 the family has stayed to live and farm in the area. With a herd of beef and dairy cattle, forestry, maple syrup, a hatchery and farm tourism among the list of their offerings, this is an incredibly busy farm.

Seventh generation owners Bruce and Nancy Colpitts (nee McCrea) worked with The Smart Energy Company to implement a grid-tied solar system that would offset their energy costs and to align with their mission of being good stewards of the land that their family and community rely on. McCrea Farms are now the first customer to install The Smart Energy Company’s Solar Farm in a Box. After receiving the materials, an instructional video, and a manual, Bruce, Nancy and their sons built their very own 100kw solar farm on their property.

In the weeks following the McCrea’s project, two other New Brunswick businesses have followed suit in building their own NOREASTER® in a box. The company is readying itself to supply customers and electrical contractors in other parts of Canada and New England.

Urban, commercial, industrial
New Brunswick leaders took notice of The Smart Energy Company’s products and their success in farming operations which led to opportunities to install variations of solar arrays in public schools, and in a number of small to mid-size businesses.

While ground installations have definite advantages over roof-top installations, McAloon has by no means given up on urban needs and the company has designed installations that work well on flat roofs.

Another ‘first of its kind’ installation is currently generating energy for the Social Enterprise Hub, a facility in uptown Saint John where land space is at a premium. Instead, an innovative system is installed on the building’s flat roof. It effectively faces both east and west, picking up rays from the rising sun, and on the other side, from the setting sun.

“That was a really good project for us to gather data from and compare with other systems,” says McAloon of the project which received an Environmental Recognition Award from the City of Saint John in 2017.

The success of the installation in Saint John also shows that solar energy systems do not need a huge amount of sunlight to function, as the port city is wreathed in fog as often as not. All that’s needed is light.

The Smart Energy Company™ has also developed a rooftop and canopy solar energy system for the Saint John Regional Hospital.

Better and better
But its innovation doesn’t stop there. When Day & Ross, Canada’s second largest transportation company, with over 8,000 employees, drivers, and owner-operators in Canada and the U.S., considered how they could achieve their sustainability goals, they turned to The Smart Energy Company™.

The result is that their state-of-the-art terminal in Moncton is now powered by the largest net-metered solar installation in Atlantic Canada. The 100 KW NOREASTER® solar array will save Day & Ross thousands in utility bills and offset 34.5 tons of equivalent CO₂ emissions a year, which equates to 3.2 hectares of carbon-absorbing forest.

Kevin Chase, CFO at Day & Ross, says, “The Smart Energy Company™ completed the project on time and to our satisfaction. We have been impressed with how they have adapted to working during this pandemic and have provided great overall project management and guidance. They have helped improve our understanding of renewable systems as this solar installation in Moncton is a key step in our larger sustainability strategy.”

Just as the Day & Ross project was wrapping up, work was beginning on a 1.63 MW community solar farm in the Town of Shediac. In partnership with NB Power, The Smart Energy Company™ is building and installing over 4,000 solar panels and several hundred NOREASTER® arrays, connected to an energy storage system, making it the first utility-scale solar farm in Atlantic Canada.

It is scheduled for completion at the end of 2021 and is an important component of the Smart Grid Atlantic Energy Program being implemented by NB Power together with Siemens Canada, Nova Scotia Power, and the Town of Shediac.

“This clean energy project will offset the electricity used by a few of the industrial buildings in Shediac, and will be an important signature project for both our company and our province,” McAloon said.

The right direction
McAloon says that in 2017, when the team started researching and developing ground solar installations for farms, they didn’t intend this product to be competitive with large-scale projects such as Day & Ross or the partnership with NB Power to build in Shediac.

“But now it is, and companies all across Atlantic Canada are calling us and asking, ‘what is this solar farm in a box?’ It really simplifies things for them, as they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time an organization asks them if they can put solar on their property. We can offer them a full turn-key package.”

McAloon grows reflective when he starts talking about climate change and how we can reduce our carbon footprint. “There is no absolute solution for everything, but there is a need for us, as a society, to take steps toward the right solution and that is where this small piece in the large puzzle comes in. Renewable sources of energy like the NOREASTER® won’t change everything, but it is moving us in the right direction,” he says.

“We can’t continue the way we were, so the shift starts when people and organizations start taking a leadership role. It’s people like the Pownings [sculptor Peter Powning and author Beth Powning, early adopters of the NOREASTER® on their property near Sussex]. It’s the farmers, like McCrea Farms, businesses like Radical Edge (outdoor outfitters in Fredericton) or ALIVE Kombucha in Moncton who put our logo on their beverage bottles. It’s large organizations like Day & Ross, or Saint John Energy or NB Power [which awarded its Energy Efficiency Excellence Award to The Smart Energy Company in 2018],” says McAloon.

“It is all our partners who are making a difference and for this, our little grassroots company is very grateful.”

In addition to solar energy systems, The Smart Energy Company is also a source for Generac PWR CELL Clean Energy Storage Systems and is an approved installer for Tesla Fast Charging Stations.

The post Sustainable Energy Wherever There's a Little Sun<p class="company">The Smart Energy Company™</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

For the uninitiated, solar energy is all about large, south-facing solar panels. But there’s a lot more to it.

It’s about controlling the charge and converting it into usable electricity for building owners, whether they’re off- or on-grid, and doing it reliably and efficiently, through an expertly designed system.

This is where MidNite Solar with its extraordinary range of ground-breaking products comes in.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Robin Gudgel, President of MidNite Solar, the company he founded in 2005, about all this. The company name, he admits, is an oxymoron but a good conversation starter at trade shows. And no, the company does not generate solar energy at night nor is it located high in the Arctic for the sake of midnight sun.

A cat called MidNite
Instead, MidNite Solar is based in Arlington, WA, and is named for the stray black kitten who adopted Gudgel and his late wife, Mary Rintoul, on the night they first inspected the building that would become home to their company – and which has now expanded into a campus of eight, and soon to be nine, buildings.

The ninth building, instead of being a production or sales facility, will offer daycare services for children of employees.

Gudgel had noted that, during the height of the pandemic lockdown, parents were finding they could survive on one salary and that it benefited the entire family to have a parent at home all the time. It’s a sentiment that he sympathizes with – and says that his mother was a stay-at-home mom – however not one that is helpful to his business. With a company-run daycare, where parents can visit their children on breaks and at lunch time, he believes he has the solution to both family and staffing issues.

Gudgel says he’ll need to hire 50 to 60 people when he returns from a major trade show in New Orleans in September to fill anticipated orders for the state-of-the-art products in which he’s invested 17 years and millions of dollars.

Behind the scenes
Although the official start-up date of MidNite Solar was 2005, the expertise in electronics that supports the ground-breaking products dates back to 1971, when Gudgel was a young mechanical engineer working for Phase Linear (later the Carver Corporation), building massively powered stereo amplifiers.

“I learned a lot about power electronics from Bob Carver,” Gudgel says. “He was the godfather of stereo amplifiers and every rock band in the world used them.”

Then Gudgel started his own company, Spectro Acoustics, building amplifiers, tuners, and equalizers. For a while in the ‘70s, he says, it was the largest equalizer manufacturer in the world. He later did a stint designing nuclear bomb launchers and aircraft, and says he “learned how to make things reliable,” which led to his third career, in the solar industry this time, and the formation of his second company, Outback, which he has since sold.

When Gudgel’s business partner Ken Cox became president of Trace Engineering (now Schneider Electric) he began designing products for them, with some of his designs from the 1990s still in use today.

What he designs and produces he says is “really a combination of physics with the look and feel of hi-fi gear and the ruggedness and reliability of military aircraft. The stuff I designed and produced still works after 30 years. You can take a 30-year-old inverter that I helped produce and it is still running whereas competitors’ products have failed,” he says.

“I’m not a business genius, and my late wife would force me to look at a P and L statement once a year,” he admits, “but I do come up with some products that work quite well, because that’s what I enjoy doing – designing products,” he shares.

“My goal has always been to produce the best equipment out there, to pay attention to what the competition is doing, and figure out how to do it better. My brother Bob (who is also part of MidNite) and I have been doing this all our lives. This is what we do.”

The big reveal
When distributors arrive at MidNite Solar’s booth at the Solar Power International trade show in September in New Orleans, and at other large trade shows later in the year, they will be introduced to some outstanding products.

First, there are two new charge controllers, the Hawke’s Bay MPPT Solar Charge Controller, and the Barcelona, an MPPT battery charger, both of which are named in fond memory of vacation spots enjoyed by Gudgel and his late wife in New Zealand and Spain.

Product literature describes the Hawke’s Bay model, which can be paired with a HB Breaker Box, as the least expensive large 600VDC MPPT, either by itself or when outfitted with options, and has three auxiliary inputs/outputs, the most in the industry, and comes as a 90 amp or 120 amp model.

Meanwhile, with a 200 amp, 48V output, the Barcelona “is the most powerful and versatile charge controller in its class and is ideal for medium-to-large size stand-alone and grid-tied renewable systems.”

The Barcelona contains “a built-in breaker box and built-in talking MNGP2 graphics which allow communication, monitoring and programming of all future MidNite products from a single unit,” meaning there is no planned obsolescence, something Gudgel says he hates.

The Barcelona is the ideal companion to the third new product, the 7000-watt Rosie inverter/charger (named for World War Two’s iconic female riveter, Rosie), with an alternative 2800 W, 12-Volt model available for marine, RV, and other mobile applications.

The fourth product is the MNB17 (named for a B17 bomber).

The bomber
The MNB17’s unique modular construction with the inverter, charge controller, circuit breakers, and lighting system all in one is so advanced that eight patents have been granted. The product literature describes it “as one of the most advanced battery-based, inverter/charger systems ever devised.”

The ‘bomber’ is available in two sizes, the B17-3F and the more powerful B17-5F with a capacity of 15,000 watts, at 52 volts. Its talking graphics panel speaks in English, Spanish, and French and its optional communications module allows communications with other MidNite products as well as to the Internet.

In addition, the pleasing appearance of its artistically designed exterior led one distributor who saw the prototype to say to Gudgel, “I don’t know what this is, but I want it on my living room wall.”

A significant feature of its construction is that its individual components are separated into discrete modular elements, meaning there are no heavy parts to lift and manipulate, which makes installation and repair so much easier. “No matter how good you are, something can fail,” admits Gudgel, “but it’s different with the B17 because of its modular construction.”

The modular moment
He goes on to explain what happens when the lights fail (always on a Sunday afternoon) and the customer calls and asks, ‘What do I do?’

All the dealer can do is tell him to start the generator and throw the bypass switch, and he’ll come out the next day. On Monday, the dealer drives two or three hours to reach the customer, diagnoses the problem, takes it back to repair or replace, and maybe a week later returns to install it. All that time the generator has been running, filling the air with gas or diesel fumes.

But if something happens to one of the B17 inverter modules, the customer can read the meter and tell the dealer there’s a problem with a certain bay. The entire system doesn’t go down and simply operates with less capacity. Nor does the dealer have to spend precious time traveling, but instead, can send a replacement module that “a 10-year-old kid can install in 30 seconds.”

“And it’s safe because these are hot-swappable, meaning that you can pull a module in or out after waiting a tenth of a second to discharge all the voltages down to a safe level. We spent months perfecting that and it works incredibly well.”

“I think in the future the B17 is going to play a large role commercially, because you could have a 10,000-watt inverter if you kept stacking the modules. I can’t imagine all the uses and applications, but, for example, it could be used for a municipal sewer pumping station. I like producing the power where it is used – at residences, for instance.

“So you could have 10,000 or 20,000 watts of solar-panel power, and when you get home at night you could plug an electric car into the battery bank that has an inverter, and charge it with the power you generated during the day.”

Made in America
All of the products MidNite Solar is about to launch meet NEC, UL and CSA standards and have ETL, UL or TUV approval. They are die cast and extruded aluminum enclosures, as opposed to sheet metal; they can switch between 120 / 240 60Hz and 230VAC 50Hz voltage, which makes them suitable for offshore markets as well as the North American one. Circuit boards are coated with Conformal to protect them from contaminants and moisture. Every detail is carefully considered.

Perhaps most importantly, they are all made in the U.S., in contrast to so many electronic products now produced offshore, in China, India, Germany and the Philippines. “People ask me why I build here because no one else is,” Gudgel says, “and I tell them I do it because I’m stubborn, and I like to keep good guys working. That’s my only reason.”

And as for anyone who ever thought black cats were unlucky, the company’s namesake has proven them wrong. At age 16, “MidNite is the most spoiled cat in the world,” Gudgel says, “and sits up with Doug, one of our engineers, and looks at squirrels through the window,” while the company named for her is poised on the brink of huge success with its revolutionary new products.

The post The Energy May Be Alternative – But These New Products are All-American<p class="company">MidNite Solar</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s economy had been based on fishing the rich North Atlantic ever since John Cabot arrived in 1497, leading an influx of European fishermen from England, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain, who began establishing permanent settlements in 1603.

And so it continued in a sustainable manner for centuries until the 1950s, when the arrival of enormous, technologically advanced trawlers, many from Europe and Russia, began depleting not only the cod stock but severely damaging the ocean ecosystem that the remaining fish needed to survive.

Following 40 years of myriad contributing factors, including the rapid growth of the seal population – natural predators of fish – the northern cod fishery collapsed in the early 1990s and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans imposed a moratorium on July 2, 1992, ending 500 years of commercial fishing and a cod stock that had lasted for millennia.

It was the largest industry shutdown ever in Canada. As a result, over 37,000 fishermen and fish plant workers lost their jobs, leaving over 400 coastal communities devastated.

Not only did the collapse of the fishery have a severe socioeconomic impact on the entire province, it raised troubling questions about food security.

Fish are recognized as an excellent source of protein and essential omega-3 fatty acids, and are high in certain vitamins and minerals, including Vitamin B-6 and 12, potassium, iodine, magnesium, and potassium.

However, just as demands for this healthy protein source increased, the supply dwindled and almost disappeared. The effect was all the more shocking because this priceless resource had once been deemed inexhaustible.

Aquaculture to the rescue
When the fishery collapsed and the cod moratorium was legislated in 1992, aquaculture was a fledgling industry in Newfoundland. Today, with a market value of over $276 million, it is an economic success story that provides more than 2,500 jobs, over 90 percent of which are full time. Aquaculture is a key part of economic development and the diversification of Newfoundland’s economy.

Within the industry is a wide range of jobs – in the hatcheries, farms and processing plants, and including positions for skilled engineers, veterinarians, researchers, marine biologists, scientists, and farmers. In addition, there are many indirect jobs, in feed manufacturing, packaging, supplies and service, vessel repair and maintenance, and transportation.

To learn more we spoke with Mark Lane, Executive Director of the Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association (NAIA) and the mayors of three coastal communities, Stephenville, Harbour Breton and Hermitage-Sandyville.

Lane tells us that the NAIA, which was formed 30 years ago, initially represented the interests of hundreds of farmers, but since then there has been a lot of consolidation. Membership now includes businesses on the service supply chain, coastal communities, and seven major aquaculture companies.

Among them are three of the world’s largest: Cooke Aquaculture, a family-owned company based in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada, and two publicly traded companies, Mowi Canada International and Grieg NL Seafarms Ltd, both of which originated in Norway.

The industry is divided into two sectors. The larger salmonid sector produces Atlantic salmon, steelhead trout, and Atlantic cod, while the smaller shellfish sector produces mainly blue mussels, some of which are certified organic, along with oysters and sea urchins.

“We are really proud of what we’re doing,” Lane says. “The aquaculture industry in Newfoundland, with seventeen thousand kilometers of coastline, surrounded by pristine waters and proximity to the US market, has an enormous potential to give hardworking Newfoundlanders an opportunity to work at home.”

Socio-economic impact
Steve Crewe, Mayor of Hermitage-Sandyville, a small community (pop 422) on Newfoundland’s south coast, succinctly describes the region’s dependence on the industry: “We don’t exist without aquaculture. Without it we would be an aging, dying coast, but with it we are booming.”

He says that prior to 2008, when aquaculture got started in Hermitage-Sandyville, the community had a small fish plant that operated about 14 weeks a year and most people earned approximately $20,000. “Now everyone is working, and most people earn around $50,000, and we’ve never seen that before.”

The fish farming process begins in one of a number of land-based hatcheries where the eggs are produced and raised to the smolt stage over a period of 18 months before they are transported to licensed off-shore fish cages.

Water systems
We spoke with Tom Rose, Mayor of Stephenville on the west coast, (with a catchment area of 25,000) about the Northern Harvest Sea Farms hatchery operation located there, adjacent to the town’s international deep seaport facility and airport. He told us that since being purchased by Mowi, it is gearing up for significant multi-million dollar enhancements.

The hatchery in Stephenville, one of the largest in North America, is strategically located to take advantage of what Rose calls “one of the best water systems in Canada. We are blessed here in Stephenville to have deep artesian wells for our water system and we have deep rivers in our aquifers running down to the salmon hatchery and that was one of the reasons we were selected.

“One of the things I like about it is that there are no emissions coming from this facility. We had a pulp and paper mill that closed down years ago and we lost up to 250 jobs, but we also lost the smokestacks, and today Stephenville is a cleaner, greener town,” Rose says. So clean that the town has been able to sign on as a partner with a federal climate protection program that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and allows the town to accrue carbon credits.

Embraced by nature
Aquaculture fits right in with Stephenville’s master plan, the tagline of which is ‘Embraced by Nature,’ and which has three major checkpoints, the economy, social development, and the green component. “The aquaculture industry does not have a heavy footprint, and really ties into our strategic plan as the type of industry we want to expand for the future of our community,” says Rose.

The environmental benefits are echoed by Lane, who talked about the marine cages which then allow the salmon smolts to grow in their natural environment and how the farms are operated vertically as opposed to laterally, thereby creating a minuscule footprint. “To produce 18 billion meals of salmon last year, globally we used .00008 percent of the world’s ocean,” he says, to illustrate just how efficiently and environmentally friendly it is to produce a huge output of food for a planet with a population of seven billion people and still growing.

Aquaculture, he maintains, is the future of food. “When you compare traditional agriculture, the beef cattle industry, with aquaculture in terms of carbon footprint, water usage and food conversion ratio, we’ve far out-performed any other type of animal protein farming.”

Adds Rose, “If you are a true environmentalist, you have to support aquaculture as it is the only way we are going to feed the planet without destroying it.”

Cod disaster
Meanwhile, Georgina Ollerhead, Mayor of Harbour Breton (pop 1,634) on Fortune Bay on the island’s south coast, speaks about what aquaculture means to her community. “When I talk about it, I say to people, where would the entire coastal area be without it?

“When the cod disaster happened in the early nineties we depended on the fish plant and it closed. We had people packing up and leaving, moving out west to look for work, others not willing to move but having no work. When aquaculture came it was a blessing to us and it has been ever since.”

With people working year-round at good paying jobs, she says the tax base of the small town is able to maintain a hospital, ambulance service, a fitness centre, municipal infrastructure, as well as retail.

Lane recalls the massive impact the cod moratorium had on every rural outport, with Harbour Breton and Hermitage especially badly impacted. He recalls that at the time he was working for a newspaper, was in Harbour Breton the day the plant closed, and there the day it reopened to process salmon. “To see people going back to work was emotional and impactful.”

Turning the tide
But it’s not only about people going back to work, it is about also stemming the out-migration tide which has plagued Newfoundland for years. Ollerhead notes her amazement at how technical the plants are, and how young people who graduate from Memorial University in St. John’s are able to find work in their home communities.

In keeping with that, Lane says NAIA has taken the initiative to launch Aquaculture 101, a comprehensive internet-based resource that teachers can download and use to provide for their students a virtual reality tour of shellfish and fish farming. With this technology the association will be able to show high school students the amazing opportunities that await them.

The post Thanks to Aquaculture, the Future is Bright for Newfoundland<p class="company">Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association (NAIA)</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.