Who wood-a thunk it?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/04/2010 (5652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

J NEUFELD has his  work cut out for him if he intends to become an Inter­net sensation along the lines of OK Go and Justin Bieber.

Neufeld is the president ofWood Anchor, afive-year-old Winnipegfirmthat makesflooring, furniture and deckingout ofreclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood istimberthat has been salvaged from a variety of sources, including old barns, abandoned warehouses and emptygrain elevators.

Just before Christmas,three 60-second clips ofWood Anchoremployees in action — including the titillatingly titled "Mark sanding a table top" and "Mark sanding legs for a table top" — were loaded onto YouTube. At last count,thevideos had garnereda grand total of237 views, combined. "It won’t be long and we’ll outdo Bieber," Neufeld says. "Everyone wants to watch people sand or cut wood."

 

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On an annual basis, the City of Winnipeg chops down between 4,000 and 6,000 elm trees in a bid to control the spread of Dutch elm disease. For years, the felled trees were transported to the Brady Road Landfill, where they were ultimatelyburned or buried.

Neufeld, 34, was dropping off a load oftrash at the landfillthree years ago when he spotted themountain of discarded trunks andlimbs for the first time.Thinking he might havejust tripped over a gold mine of raw materials, Neufeldreturned tohis officeto do some homework.The married father of two — who was "horrible" in shops class during his days at Niverville Collegiate — learned that Dutch elm disease attacksonly thebark of a tree. Once the bark is removed, the remaining wood is generally good to go.

Neufeld contacted the city’s waste department. Whoturned him over to the urban forestry branch. Who asked him, "When can you start?"

Of the dozen or soreclaimed wood companies currently operating in North America, Wood Anchor is the only one that specializes in landfill-diverted elm. 2010 marks Year Two of Neufeld’s open-ended contractwith the City of Winnipeg — a pilot project whose mandate isto convertan environmental migraineinto an ecologically sound product. (Never mind the millions of litres of fuelit takes to bore holesbig enough tobury thousands of tonnes of trees;as the wood decomposes,enormous volumes of methane gas are releasedinto the atmosphere.)

"Basically, we get every tree," Neufeld says, when asked about theterms of the agreement. "We have a quarantined site at the landfill where we do all of our own cutting. And even thoughthe contractcovers the saw logs only, we’re busy trying to develop a market for the entire tree — leaves, brush… everything– byturning that into a bio-fuel."

Wood Anchor has Canadian customers from Vancouver to Toronto. There’s also a distribution centre in Fresno, Calif., that services green-minded clientsin that state, as well as Texas andArizona. Closer to home, when the West End Cultural Centre re-opened in May 2009, it did so with a new dance floor fashioned from Winnipeg elm trees.

"If you’re comparing our prices with other North American-made flooring, we’re in the same ballpark," Neufeld says. "But if you’re comparing us to Asian-made flooring that you’re buying at Home Depot,we’re not in the same category. We’re definitely not an impulse buy."

 

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Wood Anchor recently made a name for itself on the international scene. Prior to the start of the Vancouver Olympics, CentrePlaceManitoba, the province’s Olympic pavilion, was awarded a Sustainability Star by Games organizers. Designed by Winnipeg-based Cibinel Architects, the 2,560-square-foot structure featured floor boards and ceiling soffits provided by Neufeld.

"Everybody who visited that building asked about the wood," says Travis Cooke, one of the project’s lead architects. "As soon as you went in, it had that real cottage smell." (For the record: Cooke didn’t make it tothe Wet Coastto see his design in action; three days before Gretzky & Co. lit the Olympic torch, Cooke’s wife gave birth to twins.)

Cooke first twigged into Wood Anchor three years ago, when he visited the company’s booth at a Convention Centre trade show. "I remembered them right away, after we got the contract for the pavilion," he says. "The province told us that the main initiative was to make the building as green as possible. Wood Anchor’s product is even better than recycled material, in a way, because it’s something that would have definitely stayed in a landfill, if it hadn’t been given a second life."

Presently, Wood Anchor doesn’t have a showroom, per se. "World Headquarters" — more Swiss Family Robinson than corporate America — is a third-floor loft, nestled in the trees on the bank of the Red River, 10 kilometres south of St. Norbert. "We don’t get a lot of people coming outhere," says Neufeld, whose family homesits 100 metres away on the same property. "But those who do, love the place; it’s a gorgeous spot to be, for sure, when the mosquitoes aren’t out."(Perk: On the day we visited, the company dress code consisted of hoodies, slippers and a three-day beard.)

"Even though Winnipeg isn’t that big a market for us, yet, there are benefits associated with staying put," says Neufeld. "Winnipeg has the biggest urban elm forest in North America, and the city is really proactive about managing it. Also, it’s relatively inexpensive as far as other sources of wood goes. Besides elm, we also get a lot of fir, hickory, walnut and oak from area farmers."

Neufeld, who would rather forget his laptop than his skateboard when he’s out of town on business, says there is one drawback to his career path– a craned neck. "Honestly, I can no longer go into friends’ homes without constantly looking down at the floors, thinking about what I’d do differently."

For more information, visit www.woodanchor.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca