Taking Stock: The Long Pedigree Of Toil

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World

The engineered wood products industry is a small world, when you consider the few number of EWPs that have made it into the commercial mainstream.

One product that comes to mind that never found its footing is Scrimber. A researcher with an Australian governmental group is credited with inventing the product in the mid 1970s. It was an engineered lumber produced from small trees, and said to have uniform and construction strength properties for traditional lumber, beams and header applications. Logs in the 3-8 in. diameter range produced from early radiata pine thinnings were debarked and run through a scrimming machine where the log was crushed to form a mat of interconnected long strands, followed by drying, adhesives application and steam pressing.

Georgia-Pacific took a look at it but backed off. In 2000, a former GP corporate director gained rights to Scrimber research and technology, renaming the product TimTek, and a couple of years after that principals with Shuqualak Lumber in Mississippi formed Loblolly Industries in anticipation of starting a plant in Meridian, Miss. to produce Scrimtec, their new nomenclature for Scrimber-TimTek.

To this day, you continue to hear Scrimber development rumblings— more dimensional stability, greater fire retardancy, hardwood Scrimber, bamboo Scrimber, etc. Think of the number of people through almost 50 years who have tried to refine Scrimber.

One man who seemed to be on the verge of a product breakthrough, not with Scrimber, but with a product called Cross Laminated Strand Timber (CLST), was Graeme Black, CEO of Lignor in Australia. He died suddenly in East Melbourne on October 26, leaving behind an extended family. You may have met him when he made a presentation at PELICE in 2020.

He formed Lignor to develop and patent products and processes entailing stranding technology. Most recently it was CLST, touted as a stronger version of traditional cross-laminated timber, while using underutilized juvenile species and performing with a lower carbon footprint. In fact in a recent issue of Panel World, Graeme and Lignor announced intentions to construct a CLST plant in Maine with a $25 million investment.

Following his MBA from the London Business School, Graeme had been a director of Craigpine Timber and Simmonds Lumber, served as a consultant in numerous projects and was genuinely devoted to forest sustainability and the environmental attributes of wood products.

Upon Graeme’s death, the Lignor web site stated, “Graeme was a visionary leader. He brought to the team a vast experience in business and a pioneering spirit that inspired us all every day. He also brought the personal qualities of intellectual curiosity, kindness and resolve.”