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Vaagen Timbers, founded in 2017, is based in the picturesque forest town of Colville, Washington. Manufacturing Today caught up with Russ Vaagen, Founder and CEO, to get some insight into the company’ s operations and its sustainable approach:“ We manufacture cross-laminated timber panels and cross-laminated beams,” he begins.“ We take structural lumber and transform it into mass timber, which includes these panels and beams, and we use this to construct a variety of buildings, ranging from small residential structures to mid-rise 18-story buildings. It’ s a broad market segment that we serve.”
As well as the company’ s transformative products, Russ explains that one of the business’ s biggest strengths is its relationship to the land and how it manages the forests it relies upon:“ I come from the forest product world. My family has a series of sawmills that have been running since the 1950s, and I was Vice President of that operation for about 15 years. I then started this business to build upon what we had done in my family’ s business, but also due to the situation in the United States. We have a lot of wild forest land, and because of that, we are susceptible to catastrophic wildfires. We’ ve even seen urban fires in recent times. This often gets attributed to climate change, which is obviously affecting it but is not necessarily the root cause of the issue.
“ The reason is we’ re not managing the flammable fuels in federal lands. Typically, in Canada or Europe, for example, land that is owned by the government is managed for its resources. Environmental restrictions are put in place, and then management takes place based on these restrictions. In the United
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