Hunt Forest Products more than a brand

By Janet Tompkins

A family industry that can survive and prosper usually owes its success to the force of a vision from its chief executive. In the case of Hunt Forest Products, Alex Hunt Jr. was that aggressive but conservative power behind the business.

He helped run his father’s company and then formed a new forest products business after selling the original. Today at age 79, he is still involved in the company although D.J. Young now heads the operations.
Alex Hunt Jr. set up his office in the remodeled childhood home right on Vienna St. in Ruston, the town he’s always called home except for college, the Army and a brief stint in Many when they purchased a Zwolle sawmill from Mansfield Hardwood Lumber Company.

His recollections of the business are clear, his face is without wrinkles and he is the 100 percent owner of the company.

The Hunt name was long associated with lumber. John S. Hunt, his grandfather, came from Arkansas and with Otis Hodge operated the Hodge-Hunt Lumber Co. (earlier the Huie-Hodge Co.) in what was then known as the “shortleaf belt.” In 1906 there were three mills: Hodge, Danville and Bienville. In addition to shortleaf pine, they also cut longleaf and hardwood.

 Hodge-Hunt sold their 72,000 acres of timberland and 20 miles of railroad to Advance Bag and Paper Company in 1926. John Hunt bought the St. Francis Hotel in Monroe which he operated for the remainder of his career.

John Hunt’s son, Alex Hunt also went into the lumber business with Hodge’s son. They operated a sawmill near Ruston which was later sold to General Lumber Company. Alex Sr. started his own lumber company when he built the Danville Sawmill in Bienville Parish. The business grew to six sawmills, including one that was leased in Converse, La. They built a new one at Dodson and purchased the hardwood mill at Zwolle and two others at Chatham and Columbia. The Chatham sawmill sawed logs into lumber and then shipped the lumber to Dodson for drying and finishing. The Columbia sawmill purchased a lot of International Paper timber.

The Converse mill was leased from the Rogers and Evans Lumber Company. “The pride of the Converse mill was its early version of curve sawing,” said Alex Hunt Jr. This technique would follow the plane of the log to produce high quality, straight grain lumber.

The company employed about 700 people and cut 130 million board feet annually at the top of the sawmilling business. That was a feat in the early sawmilling days but today one sawmill can produce that much lumber. “The challenge was to keep the mill running consistently. If you did that, you were fairly successful.” How did he do it? “Maintenance and good people.”

Straight grain lumber was the niche that the Hunt sawmills aimed to fill. “We cut a lot of high grade timber,” said Alex Hunt Jr. Some of their best customers made bowling alleys and gymnasium floors.  Bowling alley companies AMF and Brunswick in Michigan wanted southern pine with the highest density straight grain that would hold the balls straight.

There were patterns then for each of the products according to the company specifications. From bowling alleys to gym floors and railroad timbers, each would have varied specs. They would also produce car linings for boxcars. “We would go to Chicago in January to meet with the Santa Fe, Rock Island and IC railroads for their buying for the year.”

“The biggest shift in the business was when we got out of patterns,” said Hunt. “We were one of the first to go to two-inch lumber. It dramatically upped production and recovery.”

The next big change was when Hunt went into a partnership with Willamette to get into the emerging plywood market. “Log procurement was the reason for the partnership,” said Hunt. Hunt procured the ply logs and Willamette processed them. “We did well with the partnership,” said Hunt. “It was a profitable market.”

They sold the business to Willamette about 1972 and his father retired. Alex Hunt Jr. worked for a time with Willamette and then when the non-compete agreement expired, he started his own company.

The new company started with the Pollock mill in 1977 making veneer to sell to Willamette and other customers.  The next year the business began producing plywood. “We selected that location for the timber,” said Hunt. It was near the IP land and the U.S. Forest Service timberlands. “It’s grown steadily in production,” said Hunt and will soon be expanding to add another press and more dryer capacity.
In the Nineties, the Castor sawmill was added along with a plywood plant at Natalbany, a hardwood sawmill at Olla and a chip mill at Bernice. Chipping operations in Wisconsin and Minnesota were purchased and these two  have since been sold. In the recent downturn, the Natalbany plant was permanently closed and the machinery auctioned off.

Other businesses included Ruston Industrial Supplies, Inc. and Hydraulic Depot in West Monroe, which have also been sold.

The company also acquired timberland now totaling 65,000 acres. “Timberland is still a really good investment,” according to Hunt. 

Hunt also likes Georgia Tech where both his father, his two brothers and he went to college. Both Alex Sr. and Jr. played football on national champion teams for Georgia Tech. Sons Alex  III and Jimmy Hunt both graduated from Georgia Tech where Alex played basketball. He also mentions grandsons Alex Hunt IV who played at Georgia Tech and Jack Hunt who played for Nick Saban’s championship LSU team.

Alex Hunt Jr. majored in industrial management at Georgia Tech. “In the back of my mind I was thinking of sawmilling when I went to college,” he said. When he graduated he entered the Army as the Korean War was winding down. He spent a year in Korea and two years in the Army before coming back to north Louisiana.

Looking back at his company’s history, Hunt shares three key lessons:

• “I learned that you have to have good people – in your woodlands and in your plants. That is the key to whether you stay in business or not,” he said.
• It is necessary to keep the manufacturing plants up-to-date. Hunt has seen a lot of change from the early years. “We went from mules to two-wheel buggies to straddle trucks to move the finished lumber and, of course, the storage sheds changed as well,” he said.
• “We always shipped a quality product,” he said. “We had virtually no claims.”
•   “We are very competitive,” said Hunt. “We’re never satisfied with good enough production if we could have done better.”

Alex Hunt has a younger brother, Tommy, who also lives in Ruston.  His older brother Davis Hunt, who was the first baby born in Lincoln General Hospital, died last year. “Davis visited the old Danville mill site the year before he died,” said Hunt. “There’s nothing left there. He said he sat down in the field and wanted to cry.”

There is nostalgia in the Hunt legacy but Alex Hunt Jr. leans more to the future. For about a year the company researched the biomass market, he said. “The price for the product now doesn’t enable you to build a plant,” he said. “It’s a matter of economics.”

The boxcars, mules and two wheel buggies are gone but the Hunt name lives on –– still to be imprinted on the growing forests in central and north Louisiana.


   


 

The File' Man of Baton Rouge

By Melanie Torbett
  Lionel Key shows off his biceps, and explains how three decades spent making file´ have sculpted this 62-year-old’s  muscular arms.

Years spent  pounding the leaves of the sassafras tree into a fine green  powder used to thicken gumbo have been a profitable exercise for Key, who makes and sells the traditional seasoning from his Baton Rouge home.  The techniques he employs to make file’ have built Key’s arm muscles as well as legions of faithful customers who relish the taste of Uncle Bill’s Creole File’, the product he crafts with century-old, wooden tools.

“I had a great-uncle named Joseph Willie Richard who made gumbo file’, mops and brooms in Baton Rouge,” said Key. “He was my grandmother’s twin brother, and he was blind.” He taught Key how to make file, and after he died, his wife gave Key his heavy cypress mortar(a bowl-like receptacle) and an ash/ pecan pestle (pounding instrument) that were crafted by Richard’s  uncle, a carpenter, in 1904. “Nobody else in the family wanted to do this,” so Key became heir to his uncle’s practice.

Key remembers that his great-uncle could tell by sound, rather than sight, how well his nephew was following his instructions to properly grind the sassafras leaves:  “He would tell me, ‘You’re not pounding it in the middle!’ because he could tell by the ‘thunking’ sound what part of the mortar I was hitting with the pestle.”

File’ (pronounced fee-lay) is a product of the sassafras tree, a type of laurel that is native to Louisiana and other states across the southern and eastern regions of the country. While the sassafras tree’s aromatic roots have long conferred a distinctive taste to such consumables as tea and root beer, generations of Louisianans have prized the ground leaves of the tree to make file’ —the thickening and seasoning agent added to the quintessential Creole/Cajun soup/stew known as gumbo.  The story goes that file’ powder was developed centuries ago by Choctaw Indians living at Bayou Lacombe on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and later sold in the old French Market in New Orleans.

While file’ is now commercially made and widely available on the seasoning aisle of grocery stores in Louisiana, some folks still like the taste, aroma and color of the homemade version. That’s where Lionel Key has found his niche, following in his family‘s tradition.

He has gained some notable customers over the years, as evidenced by some of the framed mementos on the walls of his home. Key has a menu from New Orleans’ legendary Commander’s Palace restaurant, autographed by  a former chef who used his file’ in his Muscovy duck recipe. Key’s seasoning has also gained praise from other famous  Louisiana chefs, including John Folse and Leah Chase.

In addition to magazine and newspaper articles that have featured him, Key has photographs with  former Baton Rouge Mayor Tom Ed McHugh and the late actor Whitman Mayo,  best known for his role as Grady in the old TV series, “Sanford and Son.” Key and his spice were also featured on the Food Network in a 2007  episode of Alton Brown’s show, “Feasting on Asphalt — The River Run.”  He  has demonstrated his craft at regional folklife festivals,  educational programs and cultural events that celebrate Louisiana’s history and traditions.

“Some of my repeat customers say they don’t like any other file’ but mine,”  a loyalty that Key admits “makes me feel good.”  He says his file’ has a distinct aroma, but he adds, “file’ doesn’t have a taste till it’s put in something hot.”

File’ enhances the taste and texture of seafood and chicken gumbo, said Key, but  “As a rule, you wouldn’t put file’ and okra in the same gumbo — it can make it too thick..... but I like it thick.

Key sells the bulk of his product at the Baton Rouge Red Stick Farmer’s Market, the Crescent City Farmer’s Market,  the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and over the phone and internet (unclebillspice.com).  “I typically sell out at JazzFest,” he said. While he has not gotten rich in the business, he says it’s produced a nice supplemental income, especially since he retired as a UPS driver several years ago.

Key begins the process of making file’ by harvesting tender,  green sassafras tree leaves, just at the “right time” of the year, though he declines to get too specific about that “time.”  He fills his pickup truck bed  with carefully-pruned limbs taken from a few sassafras trees that grow on the property of relatives  near Baton Rouge, or other locations he’s able to find. (“Three to four truckloads usually carry me through the year.”)  He then carefully separates the leaves from the branches, bags them in burlap, hangs them up and allows them to dry inside in warm conditions  for several months.

After drying and curing the leaves, Key places handfuls of them in the hollowed-out bowl of his mortar, and begins the pulverizing process, using a special pestle (like a small baseball bat) made of ash and pecan woods. First, he  breaks the leaves up with the ash end of his pestle; he then switches to the pecan end  and vigorously pounds the leaves into a fine, powdery consistency. Throughout the process, he is careful to remove any stems or other undesirable debris from the product; these byproducts usually end up as packaged potpourri.

Key then painstakingly sifts the powder through three progressively-finer screens that ultimately result in the refined file’ that is poured into jars (three different sizes:  one ounce, two ounce, and four ounce), labeled (with the motto — “Gotta Have It) and sold to customers.  No fancy equipment — not even a blender or food processor — or assembly line is involved in making Uncle Bill’s Creole File. It’s a handmade product from beginning  to end.

Key typically brings his antique mortar and pestle with him to festivals and markets so customers can see firsthand how he makes his file’, and the demonstrations tend to draw curious onlookers, and sometimes, amusing questions.  

“Little kids are mesmerized by the mortar and pestle,” said Key, and some folks ask him where he gets the “file’ leaves.”  He enjoys telling people about the history of file’ and the story of his great-uncle’s career making the culinary product.

Key’s 12-year-old son Colton has shown an interest in the family enterprise, and sometimes accompanies his father to festivals and markets.  While his dad is busy pounding and  pulverizing sassafras leaves, Colton acts as carnival barker, entreating passersby to stop for a first-hand look at how file’ is made.  “He tells them, ‘watch the miracle happen,’ and try our ‘fresh file’.’” says Key. “He’s a good little salesman.”
Making file’ by hand can be a tedious business, Key admits, requiring patience and practice. “It’s something I enjoy doing, but it’s a lot of work.” When he is making the seasoning, he often works for two hours at a stretch.

Always on the lookout for sources with sassafras leaves, Key says he sometimes resorts to “horse-trading” jars of his file’ for access to other folks’ trees.  “I’m particular about getting fresh, young,  tender leaves.”
The sassafras tree, its  very special leaves, and the green powder derived from them  are the ingredients that form a distinctive Louisiana heritage for Lionel Key.

For more information about Uncle Bill’s Creole File‘, call 225-388-0893, or email fileman51@aol.com, mailing address, P.O. Box 169, Baton Rouge, LA  70821.
Lionel Key is also looking for a few sassafras trees in his area to pick the leaves for his product. Call him if you have a tree to offer.

(Melanie Torbett is a writer and forest landowner in Alexandria and a regular contributor to Forests & People.)
   

Wood demand and bioenergy

By Brooks Mendell, Ph.D. and Amanda Hamsley Lang

High oil prices, worry over carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and national security concerns from importing approximately 70% of petroleum supplies raised the profile of the renewable power generation sector in the United States. 

As a result, interest in further growing renewable energy generation, including through forest biomass, has strengthened. Today, renewable energy accounts for about 7% of total U.S. energy use. Of this, half is biomass, three-quarters of which comes from forests.

According to research produced by the University of Georgia and Forisk for the Wood Supply Research Institute (WSRI), most forest biomass serves as fuel for process heat and/or steam and, often, to generate electricity for the forest products industry. 

Wood pellet markets have grown with export demand to coal-fired electric plants in the European Union.  Also, major electric utilities in the U.S. and several independent electricity producers announced plans to use wood for generating electricity from wood-fired plants, for co-firing with coal, or for converting older coal plants to consume wood raw materials.

 Announced, operating and under construction wood bioenergy plants in the U.S. would consume over 128.9 million green tons per year by 2021 if successful, while projects representing 68.9 million tons per year pass basic viability screening (Forisk 2011). 

As of April 2011, across three U.S. regions – South, North and West – bioenergy projects in the South comprised the highest potential wood use, with projects representing a consumption of 26.9 million tons of biomass. The US North – which includes the Appalachian States, the Lake States and the Northeast – has the largest number of projects, with as many as 207 announced and operating plants. North and West currently have higher percentages of projects actually operating and consuming wood.

Louisiana Update: Wood Bioenergy
How have Louisiana’s wood bioenergy markets evolved relative to the U.S. South?  According to Wood Bioenergy U.S., the state has 5 of the 147 announced or operating wood using bioenergy projects in the South.

One of the projects, Bayou Wood Pellets in West Monroe, has been operating and producing pellets since 2008. The other four projects are in various stages of development and include one pellet mill and three wood-to-electricity projects.

Point Bio Energy LLC has proposed a 440,000 ton wood pellet plant for Baton Rouge to be located at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. The group plans to start construction this summer and begin operations next year.

Point Bio Energy will ship wood pellets to Europe via barge directly from the plant location on the port. The cost of the plant is around $124 million and the primary feedstock will be roundwood.

All three wood-to-electricity projects are proposed by utilities and include two Louisiana Generating projects and one Cleco project. Louisiana Generating applied for an air permit to co-fire 3% biomass at its Big Cajun II power station.

Louisiana Generating has also announced a repowering project for its Big Cajun I power station to replace two gas fueled boilers with one new circulating fluidized bed unit. As part of this repowering, the new boiler could use biomass fuel including bagasse and wood waste.

Cleco completed construction on the Madison Unit 3 in 2009 and began commercial operation of the 100% petroleum coke circulating fluidized bed unit in February 2010. The company is considering replacement of some portion of the petroleum coke with woody biomass and announced plans to conduct test burns of woody biomass this spring to determine the optimal percentage of biomass fuel to burn.
In total, these projects represent potential incremental demand of 4.1 million green tons of wood by 2021.  However, Forisk analysis indicates 1.6 million tons (39% of the potential demand) appears likely currently.

Liquid Fuels: Transporting Cars with Wood
The U.S. consumes 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year (about 380 million gallons per day).
 This in part has generated interest and investment in generating transportation fuels from renewable, domestic sources such as woody biomass.  Forisk and the Schiamberg Group just completed a project-by-project, technology-by-technology study.  While dozens of pilot plants and demonstration projects have sprouted in the U.S., cellulosic ethanol and related wood-based transportation fuels remain technologically unproven at scale at this time.

Louisiana does not have any public plans for liquid fuels plants to use wood as a feedstock, although BP Biofuels North America is operating a 1.5 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant in Jennings, La. that uses sugar cane bagasse as the feedstock. BP Biofuels North America acquired the facility from Verenium Corporation as part of an acquisition of Verenium’s cellulosic biofuels business in 2010.

Louisiana Update: Wood Demand
While wood bioenergy markets draw the headlines, wood demand from traditional forest industry markets are showing life in the U.S. South and in Louisiana.  In the first quarter of 2011, South-wide sawtimber demand rose 2.7% from the fourth quarter of 2010, and 9.8% since the first quarter of 2010 (Wood Demand Report, 2011).  This represented the highest level of pine sawtimber demand in the U.S. since Q4 2008, just after the stock market crash.

Of the 1,087 wood-using forest industry mills in the U.S. South that consumed wood in Q1 2011, 63 (5.8%) are located in Louisiana.  During the quarter, Louisiana mills increased their consumption of pine grade (sawtimber and chip-n-saw) by 11.1%, but decreased their consumption of pine pulpwood and in-woods chips by 5.5%.  Part of this reflects low utilization in the tri-state region of Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana at OSB/ panel mills.
 
Pine Wood Demand and 2011 Stumpage Forecast for Louisiana

Looking forward, pine sawtimber prices are expected to remain stable, as markets await the return of home construction markets (Figure 3).  Pulpwood prices are expected to strengthen in Louisiana by 14% this year, in part due to the sustained, low production of residual chips from grade mills.
Conclusion
Wood bioenergy markets and projects face multiple hurdles.  While tracking projects, we communicate with project managers, investors and agencies throughout the U.S.
 For wood-to-electricity projects, primary concerns over the past 30 months included (1) financing and (2) legislative or regulatory uncertainty.  For example, public information from 2010 confirms that at least 23 developing projects representing 1,519 megawatts of potential electrical capacity delayed plans or idled.
Other firms also made major planning or strategic changes, but chose to remain anonymous.  Reasons for delayed plans or closures include low electricity and natural gas prices, uncertainty regarding legislation from the EPA and difficulties securing financing.

Brooks Mendell, Ph.D. is the president and Amanda Hamsley Lang is the operations manager for Forisk Consulting.
Forisk (www.forisk.com) provides research and educational services to executives and analysts making decisions related to timber REITs, timberlands, and wood-using energy and manufacturing facilities. 

A Bad Rap from ForestEthics

Companies large and small have made great strides in relying on forest certification standards for sourcing wood and paper products. Unfortunately, a group called ForestEthics is engaged in a campaign to pressure companies to choose only one standard, the Forest Stewardship Council, to the exclusion of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which I run, and all the others. FSC is certainly a strong option, and both of our programs have grown stronger because the other exists. However, this campaign is undermining not just SFI, but all of the valued forest certification programs. And it could have unintended consequences for forests and communities across North America.

Recently, ForestEthics announced that several Fortune 500 companies had stopped using SFI. We checked with most of those companies and found that many were caught in the unfortunate position of managing ForestEthics pressure tactics and had no desire to take such a public stance.
These companies, as we currently understand it, have not stopped using products from SFI certified companies, but most have been pressured to drop the use of the SFI label on products as a mechanism to appease Forest Ethics.

Why it is acceptable to ForestEthics that companies still source from SFI forests, provided they don't label it? Could it be that ForestEthics only cares about appearances? Does ForestEthics understand that FSC-labeled products can include a substantial amount of SFI-certified content thanks to complex supply chains? Why is it acceptable to ForestEthics that the FSC label be put on products containing SFI content and yet it is unacceptable for the SFI label to be put on products containing SFI content?

We hope those supporting ForestEthics will take a closer look at its contribution to responsible forestry, and also take a closer look at SFI’s contribution. We hope they will recognize that 37 SFI implementation committees have trained or recognized training for more than 100,000 loggers. We hope they will come to realize SFI's contribution to landowner outreach and education, and the training and awareness that is provided for adherence to best management practices for water quality. For example, our program participants have invested more than $1 billion in forest research to help drive continual improvement.
The truth is, independent experts and respected organizations around the world, including the United Nations and Society of American Foresters, have recognized multiple certifications and report that there is a growing convergence among them.

 According to the National Association of State Foresters, SFI, FSC and other standards used in North America "include the fundamental elements of credibility and make positive contributions to forest sustainability."

We are puzzled that a program that invests in conservation and community grants to solve local, national and international forestry issues should be the subject of a misinformation campaign. We know that the market, science-based conservation groups and our partners are tiring of this. Moreover, they know that shunning domestic products from forests managed to high standards hurts forest communities and costs jobs.

So, what's a responsible procurement professional to do? First and foremost, get the facts. Don't fall prey to pressure tactics. Be informed, check facts directly with forest certification programs and make informed decisions that align with your organization's values.

Look for inclusive policies that open the door to all credible tools that advance sustainability agendas. When buying forest-based products (such as office paper or packaging or building products), look for products that carry the SFI, PEFC or FSC label. Only 10 percent of the world's forests are certified, so seeking these products helps create demand for certifying the remaining 90 percent.

We aim to work constructively with organizations throughout the supply chain to ensure that these campaigns don't cause procurement professionals to throw up their hands and decide that responsible forestry is more trouble than it's worth.

In the end, we can all have preferences, but it is healthier and more sustainable if these preferences are a product of informed decision-making and not the result of pressure tactics. Guilt, pressure and misinformation are not the ingredients that drive sustainability.

(Kathy Abusow is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Inc., a fully independent, non-profit organization.)

Tree Farm has benefits for family forest landowners

The high waters heading into Louisiana from the upper Mississippi caused the hastened opening of the new John James Audubon Bridge linking Pointe Coupee and West Feliciana parishes.

This bridge is the premiere piece of construction that joins Poplarville, Miss. and Alexandria, La. with an economic roadway called the Zachary Taylor Parkway. The Parkway follows State Highway 10 through the Florida Parishes and joins Highway 1 in Pointe Coupee to Alexandria.

The Parkway is not complete, however. Road widening and rights-of way purchase are still going on so that the full 200 miles can be four-laned with good shoulders and amenable for businesses to grow.

The Audubon bridge, as most people refer to it, is 1,583 feet in length and is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the western hemisphere. Its unique appearance and orange-colored cable create a newness that makes one want to go see it for no other reason than to sight-see.

On May 5, 2011 the bridge officially opened and at the same time the St. Francisville ferry that transported cars and light trucks over the river on a sporadic basis ceased its operation permanently. The bridge was five years under construction and almost five years to the day when ground-breaking occurred on May 11, 2006.

Loggers that previously transported wood across the Mississippi had few choices. Vidalia or Baton Rouge were the only points that wood could move across the river within the normal range of trucking wood. Nothing was normal about the Baton Rouge traffic where one could find long traffic lines moving very slowly for miles.

Now that the Audubon bridge is open, wood moving from central Louisiana to mills in Port Hudson and St. Francisville has a less congested and shorter route to their markets. The same is true for wood moving from the Florida Parishes to mills in central Louisiana and beyond. Better fuel usage, shorter travel distances, and less congestion make this route ideal for the wood industry.

It is estimated that 8,000-10,000 truckloads of wood will pass over the bridge each year. Area mills have been looking at expansions and the bridge can help supply those mills with their fiber needs.

Southeast Louisiana has been especially impacted by mill closures over the years. The wood in this area now will have more opportunity to find markets in central Louisiana and points beyond through use of the bridge.

Prophetically, the first truck to cross the new bridge was a wood truck carrying lumber for markets to the east. The logging and lumbering industry may be the biggest beneficiaries of this new infrastructure improvement.

The John James Audubon Bridge was funded through the 4 cent per gallon tax on fuel that began in 1989 as part of the TIMED program (Transportation Infrastructure Model for Economic Development).

The $400 million cost to construct the bridge was the most expensive item in all the 200 miles of the Zachary Taylor Parkway. It is now complete and ready to be used for hauling wood, or commerce, or exploring a new view of the Mississippi and one of the modern marvels of engineering.