C-Falls company on the cutting edge

SmartLam general manager Casey Malmquist, a longtime Whitefish home builder, recently spoke at a high-profile wood products workshop held by the White House Rural Council in Washington, D.C.

The council promotes economic opportunity in rural America and, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, issued a directive to the 80 wood-products representatives to pursue sustainable building, research, advanced product manufacturing, and state and local policy initiatives to advance wood construction.

The take-away message, Malmquist said, is that “the future is wood and the future is good.”

Based in Columbia Falls, SmartLam is the only manufacturer of cross-laminated timber, or “mass timber,” in the U.S. The unique product was the center of conversation at the workshop, but very few knew that the product is being manufactured in the U.S., Malmquist said. Europe has been the leader in cross-laminated timber manufacturing.

SmartLam began producing the engineered wood product at the Western Building Center site in Columbia Falls last year. The company found an immediate niche in mats for heavy equipment in North Dakota and Texas oil fields. But a big drawback as a “first generation” plant is that manufacturing largely is done by hand, Malmquist said.

The plant currently produces 100,000 board-feet of mass timber each month, but the addition of another lamination press and a 12-ton computer numerical control machine will double production, Malmquist said. That means a bigger work force.

“We’ve got 21 people right now, and we hope to double that within the next year and a half,” he said.

Malmquist said the SmartLam crew’s work ethic played a huge role in the company’s early success. Meanwhile, the company is working on certification for an architectural-grade cross-laminated product, which will move the company to the next level — producing mass timber for buildings.

“Our plan was to get the plant up and running and learn about the constraints,” Malmquist said. “We’ve been able to do that with the rig mats.”

European plants are fully automated, Malmquist said, and SmartLam’s move toward automation will make the company more competitive. But the European industry also is “vertically integrated,” from seedlings to the finished product, and subsidized.

Advanced wood products have been in the limelight lately. A nine-story building in London made exclusively with cross-laminated timber has become a poster child for what is possible with mass timber. And the February issue of Popular Science magazine contained a lengthy article called “The World’s Most Advanced Building Material Is ... Wood.”

“Compared with steel or concrete, CLT ... is cheaper, easier to assemble and more fire resistant,” the article stated. “It’s also more sustainable. Wood is renewable like any crop, and it’s a carbon sink, sequestering the carbon dioxide it absorbed during growth even after it’s been turned into lumber.”

Malmquist’s construction company has been busy in the Bakken oil patch, building 56 homes, 44 townhouses and two 24-unit apartment complexes in Williston, N.D. But the co-owner nearly died in July 2013 when one of those new homes filled with propane and exploded.

Malmquist, 56, spent many long months in a burn center and is still recuperating from burns that covered 68 percent of his body. He credits his survival to medical advancements made to treat injured war veterans.

“Ten to 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have survived this,” he said. “I have my brothers and sisters in the military to thank.”