HIGH PROFILE
Tall timber Anders Ragnarsson is a Swedish-born forester who won’t settle for second best. He spoke with editor Chris Cann following World Bioenergy 2012 about climbing giant trees in the snow, the problems with the green energy movement and riding his Harley Davidson through the Italian Alps International Forest Industries: How did you get started in the forestry sector?
need high-risk tree-felling’, so I grabbed my climbing gear and my chain saw and I never went back home.
Anders Ragnarsson: I would have to say I fell into it. I grew up on a farm in Sweden and in 1983 it was time for my sister and me to take over the business from our parents. She was more of a farmer than I’ll ever be so I packed up my gear and moved to the US. In Sweden, I used to climb trees – big trees. I’d climb trees in people’s backyards that no one else would touch and cut them down. Back in ’82 in Boston there was a hurricane – Hurricane Bob – that really made a mess out of parts of Massachusetts. The trees were all over the place so I thought ‘that place is going to
IFI: That first business venture must have been a success. AR: It was. It was very successful, initially, but I knew sooner or later I was going to kill myself. If you climb up 100 feet into a tree hanging on to frozen bark with your fingernails, sooner or later you’re going to slip and that will be the end of you - and I pushed it. I pushed as hard and as far as I could have pushed – if there was anything I was ever good at, that was it.
IFI: So what changed? AR: There was generally a whole
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bunch of wood waste that I had to get rid of and at the time there were few disposal options, legal or otherwise. I needed to come up with a solution to this problem surrounding all the debris I was creating and so I went on a tour to find a wood grinder. Back then, in the ‘80s, portable wood grinding technology was scarce – there weren’t a lot of choices – and I picked a bad one. I took all my blueberry money, all the money I’d made felling, and spent it on the wood grinder and the damn thing didn’t work. Then the recession hit, no one wanted to buy the service and the bank wanted its money. It wasn’t a good combination. In the end I satisfied the people I owed money to but I was left with nothing. I was in my mid-30s by then and had to start all over, but the wood still needed to be ground up, so I took pen to paper and designed what I thought a good grinder should look like and convinced a company in Massachusetts to build it for me. I told them that if they built it, when it worked I would sell it and then I would pay them for it. They told me I was kidding myself and showed me the door but a week later, one of the brothers – four brothers owned and ran this big fabrication company – called me and asked me to come back and talk to them again. He said, ‘We have a rule that each one of us
If you climb up 100 feet into a tree hanging onto to frozen bark with your fingernails, sooner or later you’re going to slip and that will be the end of you
can do something the others completely disagree with, once. I’ve built everything you can imagine but I’ve never built a wood grinder. Tell me more about it and I’ll build it for you’. They were just a fabrication company so I had to do the engineering. I’m not an engineer but I took a little bit of drafting in school, I worked as a mechanic with Swedish Tractor for a while, and I grew up on a farm where you had to build most things because there wasn’t any money to buy new technology, so it began – we built it, it worked, and we sold it. My first idea was that I was going to build the machine and I was going to own and operate it, but then I thought, ‘you know what, everybody else has the
HIGH PROFILE same dilemma’, so why wouldn’t I keep making them? So I did, and one after another we found a customer and it grew into a business – Continental Biomass Industries.
IFI: So the company has always been Continental Biomass Industries?
processing waste were lifted. That was a major market for us even though it was not the first intention for the machine. The first intention was to grind stumps and wood debris that were generated from land clearing. It turned out they were extremely well-suited to grinding sawmill waste.
AR: Yes, always CBI. I wanted a long name that could be shortened. The outline of the logo is the side-profile of the rotor from that first machine. I hired a local artist and I told him we had to come up with a good name for the machine and we thought, ‘what’s the toughest animal in the woods? ... The grizzly bear’, so it was called the Grizzly Mill. So we took the head of the bear and stuck it in the middle of the logo.
IFI: Did your Scandinavian roots help your expansion into Europe?
IFI: Do you still own the company or have other investors and stakeholders come in as it evolved?
IFI: So the business expanded further from there?
AR: No, it’s all mine.
IFI: Where was your first international deal? AR: We naturally went across the border into Canada. The Canadian sawmills were converting from Teepee burners – they burned all their sawmill waste in the wood yard in a tent looking structure. These were outlawed in the 1990s because of all the smoke going into the valleys so we sold hundreds of these Grizzly Mills into Canada as the standards for
AR: They did. I understood the culture over here and am used to the materials so taking the machine back to Sweden and convincing the industry of its merits wasn’t too difficult. It was also important for me to go back after disappearing 10-15 years earlier and show that I’d amounted to something.
AR: That was around 1995 and the Scandinavian market grew then we got into Japan with a big contract then moved into Australia, which was a very good market for us and now South America is becoming a very important market, even Africa is coming along.
IFI: Are you finding more business coming out of Africa as various countries begin to mechanise their industries? AR: Africa is a hotbed, absolutely full of problems, but one thing
Anders chats about the Southern Hemisphere market at AusTimber 2012
It was important for me to go back after disappearing 10-15 years earlier and show that I’d amounted to something
that can be done there is the growing of trees – once you get them into the ground they tend to
look after themselves. One thing that has been happening there lately is rubber tree processing to make fuel which is shipped to Europe. We’ve started to see more of that and have become involved with it a little bit through projects in Liberia and Ghana. Our equipment is a good fit over there – it’s simple, it’s effective, and it’s robust. So, we’ve established some outlets across the world – CBI Europe, CBI do Brazil, CBI Australia, CBI Chile – most of which have been established in the last few years.
IFI: You said that you fell into this industry but now that you’ve established yourself would you say it’s become a passion, particularly biomass? AR: If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll never make it – success doesn’t happen by itself. I’ve always been competitive by nature. If I’m going to make a machine it has to be the best, otherwise I’ll quit. I love to hear my customers bragging about their machines, to hear them say: ‘I’ve got a CBI and it grinds and chips more than anything else’. If they can’t say that about my machine then I better damn well go home and build something better. It would kill me if they said: ‘Yeah, I’ve got a CBI but I’m thinking about trading it in for an X, Y or Z’. JUNE/JULY 2012 | International Forest Industries 67
HIGH PROFILE
Customers are looking at this system like they might have looked at their wife when they saw her for the first time – they’re thinking that this is the last debarking and chipping system they’ll ever get involved with – it’s good but I reckon we can still make it better That’s why I go to these trade shows and run my own machines. I have plenty of qualified people who can do that, but I love to see the look on people’s faces when I turn a CBI machine on and it just devours a log.
IFI: What was the feeling like at AusTimber 2012 and how important is the Southern Hemisphere market? AR: AusTimber was a perfectly timed show for us. We decided to build an in-wood debarking and chipping system about two-and-ahalf years ago that would be second-to-none. We had customers who were using our machines to grind that would ask us why we weren’t making debarking and chipping systems, so we said: ‘alright, we’ll do it’. So we went around the world interviewing people that were chipping in the field. We had a
blank piece of paper and asked people what they’d like if they could have anything – if you listen, I mean really listen, people will tell you. So, based on that, we spent a year-and-a-half designing and another year building and when we were done we’d made the first 604 Magnum Flail Debarker, which connects and talks to a 754 Magnum Disc Chipper. They are transported separately but link up in the forest. The chipper moves the flail and one operator controls both machines remotely, while a custom built Tigercat loader sits on top of the unit. We’ve significantly raised the bar when it comes to the productivity and quality of chips and with productivity it’s not just about how fast you can produce a ton of material but also how long can you run without having mechanical issues. It’s also about
Anders prefers to operate his machines himself at trade shows to gauge the client reaction how long it takes to move the system from one landing to the next, and with the Magnum Chipper dragging the Debarker, the system can be driven from one landing to the next and just backed in.
We sold that first unit to a company in Western Australia, Softwood Logging. We’d just finished the second system in time for AusTimber and that’s the one that we took to the show. The best markets for this product are eucalyptus and plantation forests, of which Australia has plenty, so this show came at just the right time. Our competitors were all there so we were able to say: ‘there you go fellas, now you can
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HIGH PROFILE
My favourite past-time is to get a big V-Twin between my legs and go riding in the North of Italy
compare’. The market has so far received this product remarkably well and is perhaps giving us more credit than is warranted. Customers are looking at this system like they might have looked at their wife when they saw her for the first time – they’re thinking that this is the last debarking and chipping system they’ll ever get involved with – it’s good but I reckon we can still make it better.
IFI: Do you take a different approach to a show like World Bioenergy 2012 to something like AusTimber? AR: Yes and no. The World Bioenergy Show has a different focus than the AusTimber, which concentrates on the harvesting and in-woods chipping contractor. It’s a little bit of a different clientele and is more about specially engineered machines to fit a very competitive marketplace in Europe where there’s lot of different road regulations and many customers trying to produce a specific product in a specific way. Especially now there’s a glut of fuel in Scandinavia and so the prices are going down so we’re trying to figure out how we can help these entrepreneurs and companies continue to make money – that is the challenge – and if you succeed you’ll make some very good friends.
IFI: So what were those entrepreneurs asking for when you spoke to them at World Bioenergy? AR: They want smaller machines that are still productive – just because they’re small, doesn’t mean they aren’t productive. Even though our machine has the lowest fuel costs per tonne of wood fuel produced, you have to
look at the complete system that these guys are trying to operate and see how you can further improve this. You also have to see how you can make these machines more portable and how you can meet the evermore increasing weight restrictions of different countries. Just like in the US, where almost every state has its own regulations on weight and transport and emissions, the same can be said for Europe with its many member states – what goes in Finland doesn’t go in Norway and what goes in Norway doesn’t go onto The Continent. So we’re really trying to understand what the contractor needs, what they’re trying to achieve and who are his customers and what are their needs – what is it that his customer demands of him and what machine can we make for him that will deliver that product in the most cost-effective way to give him that edge to beat his competition.
IFI: Does it mean the versatility to adapt between regulatory environments is important for you in being successful? AR: Yes, that’s crucial. We have to adapt between the regulations of these various countries and that process has to be economic. Some manufacturers set themselves up to mass produce one model and that’s a business model that can work very well. We set ourselves up a little differently. We have a very competent engineering department that is able to mix and match components, parts and pieces to custom-build in low volumes and still make money. That’s our niche. It would be nice someday if we can make a long run of the same machine but, today, those who are
Enjoying the scenery at the foot of the Italian Alps spending money on new machines need something different and specialised for their business – that’s what we do.
IFI: Have you seen any change in appetite for green energy given the shift in economic circumstances globally and the removal or reduction of some green subsidies? AR: There are so many people in the biomass business for many different reasons it’s tough to know where to start. Whether the green energy business is subsidised or not, it’s about sustainability – where are we going to get fibre from and how are we best going to use that fibre? By building condensing power plants and burning massive volumes of wood at 30% efficiency that has been transported halfway across the world? That’s a crime against future generations. Just because we have tax incentives to do such things doesn’t mean we should do them. We spend too much money on processing and transportations and inefficiencies in combustion. The world has to get smarter and it is getting smarter, but subsidies can skew the whole picture. Sometimes they help but sometimes it’s more harmful than helpful. Transportation is a big issue. We need to plan intelligently and harvest intelligently in an efficient, mechanical way that doesn’t waste time, money and resources. This then needs to be processed into a fuel that can also be used efficiently. There are lots of sincere companies working on this but it has to be recognised that just because it is green and has a subsidy attached, it doesn’t make
it efficient or smart. I talk as many people out of the biomass businesses as I talk into it. Being sustainable and being green is the way of the future but only if that can be done with the maximum level of efficiency and with proper uses of the resources available. I think this is what we and other manufacturers and industry stakeholders are working toward.
IFI: Do you get much of a chance to do much travel that doesn’t involve biomass production? AR: I enjoy travel for a lot of reasons. My favourite past-time is to get a big V-Twin between my legs and go riding in the North of Italy. That’s something that I and few other guys who like big motorcycles have started doing in the last four years. We descend on Northern Italy and the Alpine region and go riding – eat good food, stay in little bed-andbreakfasts and have a bit of fun. We do that for a couple of weeks and cover several thousand kilometres, but it doesn’t matter how far you go. It’s about stopping in little villages along the way for some wine, cheese, the view and just enjoying the company. Then off you go again only to put your feet up and at the end of the day and enjoy a Jack and Coke. This year there will be about five of us and I just bought a new Harley that I’m equipping for the trip that is planned for the end of August where, once again, I’ll being riding through the beautiful Italian countryside. IFI
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