Business Ideas & Best Practices

This family operated sawmill in Terengganu, Malaysia shows how even small companies can benefit from modern and more efficient sawmilling machinery.

Located on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, Larch Wood handcrafts wooden end grain cutting boards from sustainably managed and harvested larch trees. In addition to its beautiful colouring and grain patterns, Larch Wood specialises in end grain cutting boards because they are durable and feature a self-healing cutting surface.

Mack Lowery turned a tragedy into a dream come true when he finished his stunning hand built, two-story, timber frame home in the dense woodlands of Mississippi. The first log cabin Mack originally built as a young man in 1976 burned in a massive fire that left his family homeless and devastated.

With the help of Wood-Mizer LT40 sawmill Herbert Butterfield built a small barn out of white pine and ash on his family farm in Charlotte, Michigan. In this barn he made a sugarhouse for maple syrup production.

Richard Wigink has been running his company in Holten, Netherlands for over 30 years. He was initially engaged in a tree surgery. Richard always found great value in the trees he removed, often created various articles from them and was glad to know that the tree continues to be valuable and serve for many years. Today, it continues to pursue the same goal.

Simostranda Stav & Laft is a timber frame construction company located outside of Oslo. The company is operated by Sveinung Bergan and Einar Holm, who have worked together as partners for 22 years.

Kim and Christian Zibulla family from the small town of Berkum in Germany run a global engineering company. The fascination with the old half-timbered architecture led them to the situation that several years ago they purchased at auction a dilapidated building listed as an architectural monument.

Many Wood-Mizer owners do unique interior projects from wood. Eric Means is one of DIY people. When a 90 cm diameter black walnut tree was cut down by the electric company, Eric Means realized the potential value and was determined to salvage the wood. “I milled it with my Wood-Mizer hydraulic LT40 and ended up with beautiful slabs,” said Eric.

Miroslav’s company is an excellent example of how a sawmill can grow steadily, investing as needed and growing production capacity without incurring too much risk all at once. Even though the company had six sawmills in operation, Miroslav eventually found that he still needed to increase productivity. So he decided to step up to a Wood-Mizer WM4000 sawmill.

Thomas Orderud, owner and operator of DesignIce, started harvesting ice from a local lake in Southeastern Norway about 15 years ago. Today Thomas can supply “everything from ice cubes to ice hotels” from his frosty 400 square meter workshop. Even in the winter he keeps the temperature at a steady -5 degrees Celcius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) so his 500-600 ton stock of ice blocks stay frozen solid.