Free Publication
A Small Business Guide
A practical guide for loggers considering expanding their production to include biomass products. Operations, financial analysis, business planning, and hard-earned advice from people who do this work.
About this book
The term "woody biomass" means different things at the policy, market, and operations levels. While sustainability and carbon neutrality are debated in public forums, prices and markets drive harvesting decisions. For loggers, woody biomass is just another group of products — something they can produce if it is profitable or ignore if it is not.
This book describes the small business considerations for loggers thinking of adding woody biomass to their production. With over thirty years of biomass production history in parts of the northeastern US, there is a great deal to look at and vast experience to draw from.
Major business decisions in a logging enterprise are seldom easy. Loggers work on very tight margins, making the right decisions critical to the business's very survival. The material presented here can help investigate biomass harvesting options, explore operational changes, and prepare business plans and loan applications.
What's inside
Section 1
What is woody biomass? Definitions from the policy, market, and operational level. Products from the woods: roundwood, dirty chips, clean chips, grindings, firewood. Markets: electrical utilities, heating plants, playgrounds, shavings, pellets.
Section 2
Felling options from chainsaws to tracked feller-bunchers. Skidding with grapple, cable, clam-bunk, and forwarders. Sorting, processing, chipping (disk, drum, flail), grinding, loading, transport, delivery, and quality standards.
Section 3
The five C's of credit. Financial calculations: payback period, rate of return, NPV, IRR. Payback production tables. How to write a business plan. A complete example business plan for a logger expanding into whole tree chipping.
Section 4
Types and roles in woody biomass harvesting. Starting from scratch. Expanding an existing operation into biomass as a sideline. Sound advice from proven sources in the forest products community.
Section 5
Processes for using woody biomass. Understanding machine rates. Equity and ownership in logging equipment. A dedicated chapter on firewood. Woody biomass harvesting guidelines and operational considerations for following them.
Full table of contents
Voices from the industry
"It's all biomass, everything from the roots to veneer. Markets will decide how it gets merchandized."Forest Products Extension Specialist
"I've harvested biomass with everything from hand tools to helicopters. These small feller-bunchers are the best low cost approach to mechanized felling."Biomass Harvesting Pioneer
"A lot of guys out there with a chipper, they'll make chips, but they don't have the big infrastructure to back it up. We can guarantee supply."Heating Chip Supplier
"We look at our business model that we threw together and it doesn't look at all like our reality model that we look at today."Veteran Logger
Publication details
Steven Bick
Northeastern Loggers' Association
Old Forge, NY
2012
978-0-9795792-7-1
USDA Forest Service, Wood Education & Resource Center
Also by Steven Bick
250 pages of operations, financial analysis, business planning, and practical advice — from someone who's spent a career in the woods. Download the complete PDF.
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