On-the-job training
Starting out as an ill-fated bush sawyer, and then running an antique ripsaw saved from the scrap heap, Leslie Forest Products’ Ron Sangara has a few stories to tell from his corner office.
By: Bill Tice
When Ron Sangara takes a walk through the production facilities at Leslie Forest Products Ltd. in the Vancouver suburb of Delta, BC, he stops frequently to chat with the company’s workforce. Despite the fact that he holds the corner office, he still knows everyone by name and has a smile and a few encouraging words for those who cross his path.
For this company president, it doesn’t seem that long ago that he was on the production floor himself, running an antique ripsaw that he purchased in 1972 for $100. That one piece of equipment, which was rescued from a scrap pile, was the start of his thriving remanufacturing business that produced over 35 million bdft of product last year.
“We have been at this location for 28 years, and before that we were in Burnaby for a few years,” recalls Sangara, who actually started out in the business while in his late teens when he ran a couple of bush mills near Princeton and Kelowna, BC. “I was from the Vancouver area, but had gone to BC’s Interior because it was economical to set up our operations. We were making poles in the bush, but fortunately I learned at a very young age that to work in the bush you either have to have a lot of money, or have mechanical ability. I didn’t have either, so after six months at each operation, we packed it in. Looking back on it now, it was a great learning opportunity and I certainly don’t regret it.”
With his “learning opportunity” behind him, Sangara moved back to the coast and turned a few old wooden buildings in south Burnaby into Leslie Forest Products, which was incorporated in 1972. It wasn’t long until he had a reman job cutting 2x4’s for a customer in Kuwait, but when he went to buy the lath for the packages at Burnaby Lath and Band, he realized he could make more money-producing lath than 2x4’s.
“We have always had a policy of trying to work with our competitors rather than against them, so we formed a good long-term relationship with Burnaby Lath and Band and started cutting cedar lath for them,” he recalls. “When I graduated from university in 1976 I had the chance to article as a CA, but they wanted me to diversify from the mill. I chose to stay and run the mill and it turned out to be a very good year for us. Burnaby Lath and Band went out of business and we picked up a number of their customers, including Canfor and Rainier, and we went from $200,000 in sales to $2 million in just one year.”
Moving up and out
The lath work became the core of Leslie Forest Products’ business and then they started to add dunnage and kiln sticks to the product line. With the company outgrowing their space in Burnaby, Sangara looked for a new site, and in 1978 he bought 3.5 acres of the current site in Delta. Over the next 12 years he purchased adjoining properties, and today the company’s offices, production facilities and storage space consume 12 acres.
“I have to give a lot of credit for our growth to both my family and our employees,” adds Sangara. “My younger brother, Dave, started working for me after school when he was just 13 and he is still here today as mill manager. My Dad, who also had a great deal of experience in the lumber business, helped me out tremendously, and my Wife, Jas, has worked in the office for 30 years, managing the money. Other family members and non-family employees in both the office and the mill have been very committed to the company and our success, and in the early days, I even had cousins who ran our original ripsaw with me for three years without paycheques.”
The first building at the new Delta site had multiple uses. In addition to being the office and lunch room, it also housed the ripsaw and two additional home-built ripsaws. The building is still used today and is affectionately called the “Little Building” by the mill’s employees. Next, Sangara built what is called the “Yellow Building.”
“We needed more space and wanted to be more efficient when our employees became members of the International Woodworkers Association (IWA), so we built the Yellow Building and installed a trim line and two more ripsaws,” explains Sangara, who adds that the Yellow Building grew again a few years later. “We added on to the Yellow Building and installed a KM16 Pendu machine and a Newman saw in what we call the ‘Pendu Addition.’ The Pendu either rough dresses the lumber or rips it and adds the grooves for dunnage, while the Newman saw trims the pieces to length in a productive way, much like Precision End Trim (PET) equipment does, but with multiple saws.”
Finally, the “Moulder Building” was added in 1990 to capitalize on the 2x2 business that Leslie Forest Products had developed.
“We were supplying a number of components to people that manufactured products such as bed frames and spindles, so we purchased a Watkins Moulder with a Grecon Dimter optimizing line, and a Stetson Ross Planer,” notes Sangara. “We then replaced the optimizingline in 2005 with new technology from Grecon Dimter because we had upgraded our software and the hardware was not able to keep up.”
Lethal precision
Sangara says the new optimizing equipment, which is a Grecon Dimter 450, is “deadly accurate” and has allowed them to manufacture more cedar products. “We are cutting a lot of cedar mill run, shop clears, and 2x3 and 2x4 product that is used for decking, soffet materials and finger joint products.”
Although Sangara was pleased with his older Grecon Dimter equipment, he did his homework before purchasing the new gear, paying visits to other mills in Spokane, WA, and Portland, OR, that were equipped with the German technology. “We visited several other mills and looked at the new equipment for three or four years before finally purchasing it,” he says.
Rick Voigt, who is Leslie Forest Products’ millwright superintendent and supervised the installation of the Grecon Dimter machine, is also pleased with the results.
“We grade mark the boards going into the line and then the Grecon Dimter optimizes the boards for value,” he notes. “We program in the settings and values we are looking for, and the machine does the rest. It is much more efficient and faster than the old optimizing machine, as it was old technology. This one is the top of the line. It’s the Cadillac.”
Voigt adds that the installation took about two weeks and was completed by mill staff. He also says the new equipment has required a bit of a learning curve. “We had to learn how to grade and mark the boards for the new machine, and we are dealing with some wet wood, so that has slowed us down a little, but we are getting there. It is a very powerful computer and it is a very powerful tool. Grecon puts on a course at its US headquarters in Mooresville, NC and we will going there in the near future to learn more about the equipment.”
Early this year the mill also added a new Cantek threehead saw that features multi rip and three-head planing technology.
“We worked closely with the local distributor, which is Akhurst Machinery in Delta,” says Voigt. “This saw was specially designed for us, as we did things like specify a 100 hp motor instead of the 25 hp motor that is standard with the saw, and we doubled the horsepower on the head motors from 15 hp to 30 hp. This saw will cut out a couple of processes for us and will allow us to bypass the moulder and go right to the ripsaw, which will free up the moulder for other processes.”
With the growth the mill has experienced over the years, they continuously added staff and today Leslie Forest Products employs 46 production-oriented hourly people and 12 salaried employees, which includes supervisors, sales staff, accounting and support staff. Markets for their products include Canada, the United States, China, Korea and Japan, but Sangara says most of the production stays at home, with the Canadian market consuming 75%.
“We were shipping more to the US, but with the duty we have changed direction and now our US market represents less than one quarter of our sales,” he says. “At this point, our shipments to Asia are minimal, but that is a market we are looking at and we are expecting growth in the Asian market.”
Sangara says one of the biggest challenges his company is facing is finding and keeping skilled employees due to the low unemployment numbers in BC.
“We are having to work harder to not only find good employees, but also to keep them. This is primarily because the economy is good right now and there are lots of jobs in the Vancouver area. It is like having a good customer. If you want to keep them, you have to look after them. If there is a problem, you need to fix it. It is the same with good employees. We have always had excellent relations with the IWA, and we have a very cooperative work force. We like to think that we have treated our employees well over the years, and they have treated us well in return, and that will help us keep the employees we have and attract new ones.”
For Sangara, that first learning experience he had with the bush mills was not his last. He has continually worked “to be a better manager” and has recently brought in a team of professional trainers to work with himself and the employees on various skill sets such as leadership and communications.
“We are always looking at ways to be more efficient,” he says. “I believe that training is a good investment in our employees and the company, and it is a good way for us to achieve efficiency in everything we do.”
Efficiency has helped Sangara build his company. That is probably why his original ripsaw still works as a back-up piece of equipment. Not bad for a $100 investment.
