Critical Mass (Timber): Zena Forest Products Tour

Zena Forest Products Tour

In the latest Critical Mass (Timber) outing, we visited Zena Forest Products, just outside of Salem. Zena is a family-owned forest management and wood products company. They current manage the largest contiguous parcel of forest land in the Willamette Valley, and do so with an eye toward management for multiple values and resilience.

Ben Deumling, President, and Scott Taylor, Director of Business Development, took the group on a tour of the site. They guided us through several forest strands, some with shorter Oregon white oak trees and lots of sun, other on shadier, wet hillsides covered in bigleaf maple, and yet other on protected slopes that have fostered towering Douglas-fir. They highlighted the natural variation present in their forest, and their approach to managing it so that the diversity of species and structures within it will last.

A key guiding principle in their operation is their interest in managing for resilience, informed both by the acknowledgement that forests are seeing many disturbances, such as wildfires, these days, and in part by his desire to see the land remain healthy and functioning for future generations. Zena’s focus on maintaining a resilient landscape and business led them to build a wood products company and product lines that enable flexibility in terms of resources and scale.

Ben spoke at length about their journey to develop products – flooring in particular – that gave them flexibility to use what they have, in terms of species and size. Zena has done significant work in product development and testing to develop product lines that let them use what is available – hardwoods and softwoods, big or small. This approach to the final products they produce is deeply informed by the type of forest management they practice.

They have two primary flooring lines, an engineered wide plank floor and associated fittings, and their EdgeGrain tile systems. The EdgeGrain tiles were developed by adapting a European wood tile technique to materials available in the Pacific Northwest. They can be seen in the concourse of the Portland Airport project, which features the flagship version made for Oregon white oak. As Ben and Scott explained, the tiles have several big advantages, like their customizability and the ease of replacement, but the big one is that the component pieces are small, allowing for an unusually high level of flexibility and feedstock utilization. They are currently testing version made from Oregon ash, juniper, madrone, myrtlewood, and as Scott proudly displayed, salvaged glulam and other mass timber offcuts.

In mass timber spaces, we are often talking about the ecosystem manufacturers, engineers, architects, and developers needed to move technology forward. The tour of Zena was an excellent reminder of the ways innovative approaches to wood resources, markets, and processes – as the mass timber ecosystem aims to do – also connect directly back to the landscape.

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