By NICK STEWART
From silviculture to soap, from cutting to carbon credits, one long-time forestry firm is looking to diversify beyond its roots, which run deep through the dark Timmins soil.
With nearly 30 years of business experience under their belts, the family behind Millson Forestry Service is taking a baby step into the realm of consumer products.
“We’re getting into non-traditional forest products,” says David Millson, who runs the company with his wife, Sue.
“It’s not something we’re accustomed to, so we’re learning as we go.”
Sticking to their area of expertise, the company is moving forward on the use of balsam oil as the foundation for various products. With a wood allocation in the Romeo Mallette forest, the company can make use of special processes to extract oils from balsam fir trees.
From there, the oils are used as an ingredient to provide strong natural scents to products such as handmade soaps and other related products, which will initially be sold through the web. Discussions are underway to bring the products to various local retailers.
The balsam oil will also be sold in bottled form, for use in aroma-dispersal devices, such as incense burners.
Millson says the company hopes to capitalize on niche markets currently dominated by other naturally-scented soaps and products, such as Burt’s Bees.
The company has also taken to selling what they refer to as “oxygen trees,” which Millson acknowledges is somewhat of a redundant moniker, since all trees produce oxygen. Still, the stronger public push for a cleaner conscience when it comes to environmental impact is driving the move, and interest in the “product” has been high.
Online calculators will be made available to allow concerned consumers to calculate their projected “carbon footprint” for a particular activity, and then calculate the trees needed to offset that footprint. Millson Forestry will then plant the trees on private land purchased for this purpose, and will provide GPS coordinates to the buyer so that they can check up on their trees if they so choose.
Even for a firm that has regularly reinvented itself, this type of consumer-focused shift represents a big change for Millson Forestry, marking the first time it has offered products for general sale.
The company began as a treeplanting firm after David and Sue first met in Lakehead University’s forestry program, married, and moved to Timmins after graduation to kick off both their family and their firm in 1980.
Through the years, the company has moved from a treeplanting business to one that prepares the planting sites and also harvests the trees at the end of their cycle.
In the process, Millson Forestry hasn’t become the biggest silvicultural firm in the province, but it is certainly one of the oldest. Their client list regularly includes many of the major players in Ontario’s forestry industry, including Tembec, Buchanan Forest Products and Domtar.
Despite having grown and evolved since its inception, Millson Forestry is nevertheless seeing some challenging times as a reflection of the forestry industry’s own difficulties.
Millions of dollars’ worth of equipment sits idle in the yard, and the company’s greenhouse is only being used at half capacity.
“This is the deepest and longest trough we’ve ever seen,” David says.
“We see we’re in a changing mode, and we have to adapt to that. We can’t just sit and wait, so we’re trying new things.”
Still, hope remains strong at the heart of the Millson crew, as the promise of further diversification and the power of renewable resources is helping to buoy their optimistic spirits.
While the company has up to 20 full-time workers at any given time, the operation has a strong sense of family at its core, due in no small part to the very real ties of kinship at its heart. In recent years, David and Sue have also been joined in the business by their daughter Jenny, who followed in her parents’ footsteps as a recent graduate of Lakehead University’s forestry program.
In fact, it’s these ties that are helping to drive the Millson’s efforts to diversify in these challenging times.
“When Jenny came back, she brought along three young other foresters with her,” David says. “At this point, we’re looking to the future, and we want to be able to be sure that the business is there for them when we step aside.”
