Loggers have lost customers as local mills have shuttered, but now some of them are taking steps to breathe new life into those mills.
One step forward took place Oct. 23 in Tilleda as Timber Professionals Cooperative Enterprises as its first chip mill formally opened off of Mill Lane. Chip mills produce the material that can be sold off to make paper and for other projects.
There are 56 loggers and truckers from Wisconsin and Michigan that make up TPCE, and with the signing of the closing paperwork on Sept. 25, it became the first logger cooperative in the United States to purchase a chip mill, according to its president, Dennis Schoeneck.
It was five years ago, when the paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids closed its doors, that people came together at the table and suggested that loggers take the steps needed to purchase the mills so that lumber cut down in northern Wisconsin did not have to go elsewhere to be processed.
“We were out on a mission,” Schoeneck said. “That was quite a hit we took in the industry.”
He estimated that 15,000 people — including loggers, truckers, mill workers and people in surrounding businesses — were affected by the Wisconsin Rapids closing.
Schoeneck said he and his colleagues reached out to everyone they knew, including the Great Lakes Timber Professionals in Rhinelander and the Universities of Wisconsin, to help with the long and arduous process to form the co-op and move forward to bring wood processing back to Wisconsin and Michigan. That’s what led to discussions about purchasing the Hoffmann Wood Fiber Inc. mill in Tilleda.
“It was quite a process to do that,” Schoeneck said. “You have to have members believing in what you’re doing, especially since this forestry co-op is the first of its kind ever. The fact that this has been bought, it’s the first time this has happened.”
Schoeneck said that loggers are used to adversity, so it’s just another project to him.
“Is it cool that we’re this far? Absolutely,” he said. “Is it nerve-wracking? Sure. You’ve got a lot of people watching you and expecting it to happen.”
Although the grand opening has taken place, there’s still work that needs to be done to get it running. Schoeneck hopes that day comes soon but did not indicate when that would be.
“We just want to make our initial chips that were made here before,” he said. “Then we want to expand our markets. We’d like to work with the state’s wood innovations project out of Madison. To me, there’s so many uses for wood that we haven’t got into — the sustainable aviation fuels. There’s biochar. You name it.”
Schoeneck sees the TPCE mill as a resource for utilizing the wood cut down in forests in many different ways beyond paper.
“We just want to find more uses for that wood other than just paper,” Schoeneck said. “There already are. There are thousands of things. Looking out futuristically, there are more things we can do with our wood that’s environmentally clean, because that’s such a big push today.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
