PLANS

Components Plant

Sumitomo Forestry America, Inc. will create 129 jobs in Randolph County, NC and establish a $19.5 million investment wood components manufacturing facility in Archdale.

Sumitomo Forestry America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Forestry Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo. The project in North Carolina will establish a component manufacturing and distribution facility to produce building materials such as roof trusses, floor trusses, and wall panels used in residential housing and wooden commercial and multi-family buildings.

Another wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Forestry America, Charlottebased Crescent Communities, will help develop and build the new production facility.

Sumitomo Forestry’s project in North Carolina will be facilitated in part by a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee.

Because Sumitomo Forestry chose a site in Randolph County, classified by the state’s economic tier system as Tier 2, the company’s JDIG agreement also calls for moving $77,300 into the state’s Industrial Development Fund – Utility Account. The Utility Account helps rural communities across the state finance necessary infrastructure upgrades to attract future business.

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While greenfield sawmill announcements have dominated the sawmill news cycle in recent years, another approach was being executed in the Northeastern corner of the U.S., where Pleasant River Lumber Co. was gathering lumber mills, timberland, and other diversified forest products interests like Southern squirrels do for the winter. Today, Co-Presidents and brothers Jason and Chris Brochu lead a family business of than 800 employees, with major ongoing capital expenditure investments throughout multiple sawmills, while maintaining and building on a family culture that bodes well for the future. In addition, Brochu leadership and involvement in local and national affairs of the industry has settled into a family tradition as well.

Timber Processing gladly names Jason, 50, and Chris, 42, as the 35th annual recipient of the magazine’s Person of the Year award for 2023, marking the fourth time the award has gone to a lumberman in the state of Maine.

With a logging background, the Brochu family (four brothers including Chris and Jason’s dad, Adrian) first entered the sawmill business as Stratton Lumber in the early 1980s, building a sawmill in partnership with a Quebec family. In 2004, with Chris and Jason now in the fold, they purchased an antiquated sawmill operation in Dover-Foxcroft, Pleasant River Lumber, and began investing in machinery and production capacity, while selling out of the Stratton Lumber business.

The opportunistic growth strategy hasn’t stopped since in spruce-fir and pine lumber markets. In 2008, Pleasant River acquired an idled sawmill in West Enfield, Me. and in 2011 and 2012 purchased struggling mills at Ellsworth and Sanford, Me. The two brothers became co-presidents after those purchases, and in 2015 when their biggest competitor for spruce raw material came up for sale, Moose River Lumber in Jackman, Me., the purchase was a no-brainer.

The first in a series of diversification moves came in 2016, with the acquisition of Chaffee Transport, helping to control a seemingly uncontrollable part of the industry—trucking and logistics. The “COVID years” have seen more diversification, including the purchase of their aunt and uncle’s log home fabrica- tion business, and acquisition moves into retail store and lumber distribution, meanwhile formally re-establishing A&A Brochu Logging, the original name of the family logging business started in 1968 (which at the end of 2022 received the Maine Forest Products Council Outstanding Logger honor).

So, how does all of this work with two brothers? Both point to their age difference as a huge benefit. Jason has eight years on Chris, so while the two grew up together as brothers, Chris was just nine when Jason went off to college. Jason explains, after finishing his degree at Bentley University in Massachusetts, he “stayed away” working for other companies, doing other things. “When I am 30, he’s 22 and we come together to start working at Pleasant River. Before that we had never worked together. I think there’s an advantage there for us not having spent our entire lives growing up together. There’s no competition; we think alike. We both further as cheerleaders, and they’re quick with praise for all employees. Key positions who report directly to the brothers include Burley Higgins as Head Of Sawmill Operations; Mike Lebrun, Enfield GM/Project Manager; Bill Ossenfort, Head Of Sales; Rich Smith and Jeff Desjardin in procurement; Stephanie Smith, Pleasant River Lumber CFO; Barry Ivey with MCLH log homes; Joel Reed, A&A Brochu Trucking GM; Toby Pineo, A&A Brochu Logging GM; and Alan Orcutt and Scott Wellman heading up the retail division. Jason says, “You may think we have a ton going on, but we have the greatest people involved in running each department that we have. If Chris and I disappeared tomorrow, everything would still run. We have people that know what needs to be done. One of the benefits of growing that we’ve found is that when you start getting to a certain size, the caliber of people that you can bring into the company is pretty incredible.” have our own things outside of the mill. We live in separate towns, but we work together every day.”

The “just sort of happened” growth strategy started with West Enfield. The brothers were attracted to it because it was close to their existing lumber mill. Upon purchase, they started the planer mill back and ran 1 in. lumber through it—while making plans and decisions to bring the mill to its current state, a fully functional, redesigned and modernized small dimension lumber facility.

Chris also graduated from Bentley University. “We play good cop, bad cop with our own ideas,” before a big laugh to add, “When we were growing, we ran out of office space and got stuck together. So, we spent five years working in the same office.”

While the two might not have an inherent competition between them, they definitely act as one another’s balance beam. Chris says the ability to pull the other back on various crazy ideas has helped tremendously as capital expenditures have risen. What makes one angry might not carry over to the other, and vice versa. “It does help us make fewer stupid decisions,” Chris adds emphatically.

Opportunities

The growing conglomerate of companies and massive employee expansion has defined their job description even

Chris says that every purchase was encouraged by their father, Adrian. “What really allowed us to grow a lot was our father. He enabled us to grow and diversify. He was the guiding force behind the whole the thing.” The Ellsworth operation put them into sawing pine lumber.

As to the Moose River Lumber spruce sawmill acquisition, Jason doesn’t mince words, saying, “Our biggest competitor for raw material came up for sale, so we jumped all over that. That was the biggest acquisition since Dover.”

Trucking, logging and retail distribution all came after, in a combination of opportunities from poking at owner-operators who might be ready to retire, to owner-operators just up and calling and offering their businesses for sale to the brothers.

The company’s current capital investment and expansion plans focused on West Enfield, first with the purchase and then in 2018 with the plan to redevelop the sawmill to where things currently stand today—construction of a new facility that will be completed at the end of

River have gone away. A real need for an efficient small wood sawmill in this part of Maine existed. The original plan was to create a rough green mill and ship lumber to Dover for drying in the new Valutec kilns.

“We changed our plan,” Chris says. “It has developed further than that and at the end of this year, capacity-wise, it will be the biggest mill in the state with two lines sawing small wood at about 120150MMBF annually.”

The investment at West Enfield is that had been struggling. A similar path brought the retail distribution and lum- ber stores into the fold. A deal that originally gave the brothers three stores in 2020 has quickly grown to 15 stores across Maine.

Within the retail business, the company also has a kitchen cabinet division and wall panel plant, and log home fabrication division. Chris comments. “We like the idea of log homes because it complements our retail and pine divisions. Our first full year we made 50 log homes while completing a new automated production line with capaci-

These moves mean that the brothers’ companies touch literally all aspects of the forest products industry, from standing timber to a register receipt for a 2x4. While everything is consolidated at the Pleasant River headquarters in DoverFoxcroft, each company is an individual entity with its own team working on its

The Brochus also view each sawmill capital expenditure project on a case-bycase basis. They pride themselves on doing business with all the major manufacturers of sawmill equipment and technology. Finding the right equipment at the right time for the project they have designed in their heads is most important to them.

“Ours is a hodgepodge,” Jason comments. “We just think that when we have in our heads what we are going to put in, there might be three or four vendors who can accommodate it. We’re not stuck on one.”

Though both brothers agree, they are Valutec loyalists, having gone out on a limb in being the first to install a Valutec continuous kiln in North America, and ultimately commissioning three more to bring the total to four. “It would be very difficult for us to put something other than a Valutec in because they are so good,” Chris says. “Likewise, if we do more boilers in the future, there’s no reason to go anywhere other than Hurst.” Similarly, the bulk of optimization company-wide has landed on Autolog (now part of Carbotech), while some of the other brands frequenting their sawmills include BID, USNR, Endurance, Gilbert, Piché, Volvo and HewSaw.

Creating Culture

One thing the brothers believe has helped them greatly through the years is that they have both worked for other businesses and other bosses. They have a clear vision for how they want the culture of their company to be, based on their own value systems, and have communicated it clearly and thoroughly to their divisional management. “Culture starts at the top,” Jason believes. “Everyone we have in charge of everything knows what we think and what we believe our culture needs to be: Flexibility in work, go see a kid’s game, be yourselves. We don’t want anyone tied to a job they can’t leave.”

This flexibility also means that the brothers make every effort to be visible to their employees across all the businesses—going back to the cheerleader statement.

Chris agrees and adds that a huge part of the company’s success is because of the communities they live and operate in. Recognizing that, they try to give back as much as possible, through donations to sporting events of both time and money: “Anytime we can put a uniform on a team, it’s the most important thing we can do.” Jason helps coach basketball, Chris coaches soccer (or at least they say they attempt to).

Jason says they both feel the weight of responsibility in knowing that for most of the communities they operate in, they are the single largest private employer. It is important for the community to know they want to make a difference, he explains, and says that a lot of the help they are giving financially is in increments of $500 at a time, and it can truly make a difference as to how many can attend Boy Scout camp, for example. “There’s a lot of ways you can give back if you don’t care about the publicity. Anytime we can help, we try to help.”

The brothers are also visible in industry organizations. Chris is the current Chair of Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Assn. (NELMA) and Jason has recently finished up a four-year stint as chairman of the U.S. Lumber Coalition, the longstanding group that has taken on the subsidized import of Canadian softwood lumber. Chris believes having representation at industry groups is important for peer interaction. He is quick to point out that it is also important to have a balance—be involved in the industry but also be focused on your own business.

For the Brochu family specifically, the Lumber Coalition has long been a family matter. Their uncle Luke was one of the early leaders in the fight against subsidized Canadian lumber. “We believe in the fight against unfairly subsidized imports, and we will continue to support it,” Jason says.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Cognizant that the lack of succession planning by other operations has in a sense contributed to their growth, Chris and Jason say their situation is everdeveloping, both still working hard and with children ranging in age from 16 to 1. Jason says, as their father did, he wants to model the same behavior for the next generation, leaving it totally up to them about whether they will work for the company. “We like to describe it as a puzzle,” Jason says. “The pieces have gotten a little bit bigger, but we are still always moving pieces around. Just because a piece fits for a while, maybe it doesn’t fit at another time and needs to be adjusted in some way.”

The short-term strategy is to maximize the pieces already in play. Both note opportunities for growth on the retail side, while the mill side is always trickier. Predicting is the hard part. Everything hinges on raw material availability and cost, Jason explains, and that will dictate how the mills are han- dled going forward in terms of production scheduling.

Chris adds, “We don’t need to be the biggest in sawmilling and produce the most in Maine. We need to do it the best in the amount the roundwood allows you to produce in the area.”

In the last five years, the company has committed to more than $100 million in project-based capital expenditures, with the remaking of West Enfield receiving the largest share. “This is the biggest single investment we’ve ever done,” Chris says.

Because of the confidence in their employees, they believe the company will continue to thrive as everyone shares the same vision. The brothers pride themselves on paying good wages, having low turnover and creating a positive culture. Jason acknowledges that it is hard to bring cultures together when acquisitions happen, but they have been fortunate enough to get the right people in the right places to develop the environment they want from the top-down. And having so many different types of businesses has allowed the company flexibility in placing and moving around employees.

All the pieces appear to be in place for a positive run for a while. Chris points to the decades of housing underbuild. He believes interest rates will come down and things will make another turn to high demand. “Any lumber mill in the U.S. will kill a good market by out producing it,” he adds. “That’s the situation we are in now that will find a balance. We just need to produce lumber at the lowest cost possible all the time in order to make sure our mills can continue to run. The pendulum swings so far and so quickly. COVID showed how much lumber we can produce in a short amount of time when lumber’s at a thousand bucks. We can produce a lot when we really, really try.”

As with many ramp up announcements, the decision to invest in West Enfield was not driven by the COVID confused market, but the wood basket. A lot of small fir is growing in abundance, which is different than what the Dover mill needs.

“It’s the right mill in the right wood basket and the right location,” Chris reemphasizes. “Our father preached that forever; you don’t want a dinosaur.”

With the way these two have grown their forest products company over the last 20 years, it is hard to imagine anything the Brochus touch ever going the way of the dinosaur.