Does anyone produce pulpwood chips for market?

[SuperDuty335]

Hello. I am in NC and I'm interested in the pulpwood chip business. Does anyone have much experience in this? I have found new, commercial grade chippers for 10" material for around $10,000. I have a small wood products business and am interested in recycling wood ie. pulpwood chips, etc. Thanks, Jacob

[Haytrader]

Cedarman and his son make mulch.
You might give him a shout.

[Riles]

Welcome to the forum. What part of NC? The margins on pulpwood are usually pretty tight, I would think you'll have better luck with markets in the eastern part of the state.

Pulpwood chips need to be clean, you can't have much in the way of bark going through the chipper.

[pineywoods]

Lots of chips going to the paper mills around here, but it's used as boiler fuel, not paper. They aren't picky about bark, leaves,twigs etc. , just so it will burn. The chemicals in bark and leaves messes up the paper making process big time, so chips for paper making have to be clean, all wood fibers.

[WDH]

The whole tree chipping operations we use are large scale, producing 60 loads of de-barked chips per week or more. 

Not sure there is a market for very small scale chipping operations unless it is for the local landscape market.  Tread cautiously before investing your $. 

The big operations have about 1.5 million invested in their equipment, not including the trucking.  There is no way a small scale operation can compete with them in producing pulp chips.

[Ron Wenrich]

Are you talking about chipping slabwood or doing whole tree chips?  We chip our slabwood and edging strips.  A commercial rig at $10,000 isn't much of a rig. 

Our chipper is right in the operation, but our production is about 2.5 million bf.  We blow it right into a 40' chip van.  We will fill one about every 1-1½ days, depending on species.  We sell to a mulch dealer who grinds chips into either wood mulch or bedding.  Going price is about $28/ton. 

Before putting it in the mill, we used to have a 48" chipper run by a 671 Detroit that was sitting in the yard.  Guys would do a weeks worth of slabs in a couple of hours.  Production was about half of what is run now.  OK system, but lots of double handling.

[SuperDuty335]

No, its just the cutter unit for $10g. I have several power units to run it. My waste is strictly clean, kiln dried pine blocks and pieces. It's either the landfill or mulch and I figured If I could break even or make a little profit it would be better than wasting it. At $25/ton at the landfill it makes you scratch your head!

[WDH]

SD335,

I misunderstood.  I thought you were talking about chipping green wood.  You might be able to sell the material you mentioned as boiler fuel to a pulpmill.  They buy wood fuel, and if you produce several loads per week or more, it might interest them. 

What production level are you at?  It will have to be at least a tractor trailer load per week to interest a fuel buyer.  Also, where are you located?

[Ron Wenrich]

You could also use a hammer hog.  That will reduce it to mulch type material or boiler fuel or livestock bedding.  Being pine, I would look more for a livestock bedding market.  It would be good for horses and for most other operations. 

We sell lots of dust to both dairy and chicken farmers, year round.  We also manage to sell dust to horse shows, especially during the summer.

[SuperDuty335]

It's a small operation. I could probably muster a tractor trailer load in 2 weeks.

[SwampDonkey]

We went through that phase WDH mentions in the late 80's - early 90's. Got too expensive and a few chippers burnt up. The system used a Koering Feller Forwarder that took the whole tree, except the roots and cut and ported it to road side where a flail debarker was used, then into the chipper where it shot into the van. There was no sorting of sawlogs, she all got chewed up, birdseye and all.  : These operations were mainly on crown lands.

[Ron Wenrich]

There's a small operation down the road from me.  They do on the order of about 30 Mbf/mo and its strictly a father/son operation.  They also make custom doors, windows, trim and flooring.

They use a tub grinder to take care of all their waste.  They then throw it on a pile and sell it for landscape mulch after it has turned color.  Its a cyclical market, but it keeps all the waste cleared up.

[SuperDuty335]

I was under the impression that anyone (assuming they had chips that met the necessary standards) could sell what they had to a pulp mill. Just like I've done with saw logs in the past. Or like my father used to do when 5' pulp wood was popular in the South.
PS I'm just north of Charlotte, NC. The only pulpmill I know of is Bowater in South Carolina.

[WDH]

No necessarily so.  The pulpmill I procured for used 350 loads of wood a day.  You have to have steady and reliable suppliers to ensure that there is enough wood to run the mill through thick and thin, rain or shine, sleet or snow, hot or cold, good market or bad, etc.  The small supplier with a load here and there was not very strategic to the big picture.  You can spend your time procuring 200 loads or 1 load.  Unfortunately, larger steady volume was a must.  Also, the insurance requirements (to protect the company from becoming the deep pocket) was a major burden on the small guy producing very low production volume. 

[SwampDonkey]

As WDH says, not necessarily so. Up here we have contracts with pulp mills. Most of their supply is from Crown land where the supply is steady and known for years ahead, where it's coming from. For the small landowner to get involved usually involves some type of ticketing system of volume control through a marketing board or wood broker for a steady flow of wood volume. They just can't rely on a small woodlot owner to put up the wood and try to deal with 40,000 woodlot owners on a one to one basis. Some woodlot owners might produce 1 load a day or year. Some might take 1/2 day per load, someone else might take 2 weeks.  :-\ It's not so easy to shut on and off like a sawmill blade, during feast and famine you might experience on a portable sawmill. ;)