A society that gives bridge funding for companies in B.C.’s forest sector to make use of waste wood is hoping to offer a seventh intake to fund projects.

Dave Conly is the operations manager with the Forest Enhancement Society of BC, and speaking in Kamloops he says if money is available from the provincial and federal governments, that seventh intake could happen in 2021 or 2022.

He says the society isn’t going out and creating new harvesting, but is recovering residual wood left behind from harvesting.

“And we’re paying for what we call an incremental cost, which is essentially the difference between what the market can pay and what the cost of the fibre is to deliver,” Conly says.

“So anything that’s within an economic range, they’re using on their own. They don’t require any assistance to do this, and they’re utilizing the fibre on their own economics. When they get past, we’re out five, six, seven, eight hours and 10 hours out from these facilities to pick up residual fibre, that’s where it becomes uneconomical to do this work.

“They’re six, seven, eight hour hauls, quality that is so low that it would not generate any economic value. So we assist in paying for some of those costs per cubic metre to bring them in.”

Since 2016, the society has provided more than $233 million to forest companies to use less-valuable wood, for projects that wouldn’t of happened otherwise.

Right now, as part of what was the sixth intake of funding, the society enabled money for Domtar ($1.25 million) and Arrow ($3.09 million) to do projects with lower-quality wood. Those started in 2019 and will go until March of 2021.