#520 - Tyler Freres, Vice President of Sales at Freres Engineered Wood

The Second Studio Design and Architecture Show

David Lee and Marina Bordere-René interview Tyler Ferreris, VP of Sales at Freres Engineered Wood, about the evolution of their century-old Oregon company into a pioneer of Mass

Key takeaways

Freres Engineered Wood was founded in 1922 by Tyler's grandfather and transitioned from intermediate veneer supplier to branded plywood manufacturer after purchasing a bankrupt plant in the late 1990s.
The company developed MPP around 2015, patenting a process that laminates 1/8-inch Douglas fir veneers into panels up to 24.5 inches thick, achieving stiffness ratings of 2.0E compared to natural wood's 1.4-1.6E.

Main topics

Mass Plywood Panels (MPP) vs Cross-Laminated Timber
Cogeneration and closed-loop energy systems

Notable quotes

"Innovation is our tradition."

Conclusion

The episode provides architects, engineers, and builders with a comprehensive technical overview of

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This is the second studio hosted by the Architecture and Design Office fame. My name is David Lee and with me is Marina Bordere-René. The two of us are architects, partners at the office, and of course, hosts of the show. And today our guest is Tyler Freres. Speaker 1 (0:12) Tyler is the VP of Sales at Freres Engineered Wood, a company based in Oregon. Speaker 2 (0:17) Yes, and they produce engineered wood products. And we talked with Tyler about their company. They've been around for... I forget how many decades. Over 100 years. A long, long, long time. Family-owned company. And they historically, as you'll hear, produced plywood. And now, in the more recent years, started producing mass plywood. panels and mass plywood products. And this is something we learned about recently. They have had a number of very successful projects using this product. So we talked with Tyler all about that, how they came around to this idea, the performance aspects of it, how it compares to CLT and other things, what projects they're using it in, the capacity that they have, where it's going in the future. All that fun stuff. Also, I should say that we actually talked with him off air at the end about more like resilient design and, you know, fire resiliency, seismic, wind loads and all that stuff. And they are also doing a bunch of extensive testing in that regard and getting very positive results. So I think anyone who's doing work in those types of places or interested in those types of structures, this is still a, it's definitely a product of the system to consider using. Sponsors. Spreadsheets can't bring your designs to life, but Programma can. Say hello to our bespoke integrated software suite built by and for experienced architecture and design professionals. 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Basically, Chaos wants AI to make your imagination stronger and not take over, so you get to design with more freedom, create stunning visuals, and stay in control of your work. If you want to see what that looks like, tap the Chaos link in our show notes. This is the second studio with myself, Marina, and our guest, Tyler. Here we go. Speaker 3 (2:49) My name is Tyler Ferreris. I'm a vice president of sales here at Ferreris Engineered Wood. We're a 105-year-old company, so... always had our roots in wood products here in the San Diego Canyon of Oregon. It's a very timber rich region with a primary species of Douglas fir, which is what we've worked in for most of our existence. My grandfather started the company in 1922. It was in a small sawmill up in the hills of the San Diego Canyon. And then in the 1950s, we moved to our current location. And with the advent of veneer and engineered panel products, we moved to veneer processing, then into creating engineered wood for other third-party producers in the area. Then in the late 90s, we purchased a small plywood plant out of bankruptcy and started producing our first touch with the final customer, making commodity-grade plywood for the housing market. Speaker 2 (3:53) So repeat that last part, first touch, commodity-grade. What does that mean? Speaker 3 (3:59) Oh, I mean, you know, before that, everything we produced was an input to another producer to create a product. Like we would sell our veneer to plywood plants, our density rated veneers to LVL producers. So we were just an intermediate in the marketplace. But when we started creating plywood or manufacturing plywood, that was when we could have a branded plywood panel that would ship to the Northeast or any other portion of the United States. a real consumer product at that point, as opposed to an intermediate product. Speaker 2 (4:32) Got it. And I'm not so familiar with Oregon, but is where you're located more in the South? Like we have a colleague who friend who lives in Roseburg and I know, I think there's a big lumber scene down there as well, down at the Southern part of Oregon. Is that where you are as well? Speaker 3 (4:50) No, we're further north. We're just east of Salem, which is the capital of Oregon. We're kind of ideally situated to the Cascade Mountain Range. So being about 30 miles east of Salem, it puts us right in the foothills of the Cascades, which is some of the finest growing ground for timber on Earth. Speaker 3 (5:12) We're a little bit more rural. We're actually at the east end of the canyon, so kind of a dead end before you get to a whole lot of federal ownership. The next town is really from Idina, which is east of us, is Sisters, Oregon, which is where you start to get into the high desert areas. Speaker 2 (5:30) Got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, so you were in the story of you purchased, I think you said you purchased a plywood company that was going bankrupt, and that was your first kind of foray into a... an end product of sorts does the company continue to evolve after that point sure Speaker 3 (5:46) yeah we always say that innovation is our tradition so we've been evolving ever since but from uh from purchasing purchasing the plywood plant which most people considered to be a very unwise decision at that period of time because osb was really taking over a lot of the panel products in the us for particularly for residential construction Speaker 1 (6:06) but Speaker 3 (6:07) we've been very successful in that Since then, we've invested heavily in cogeneration. So we produce about 7.2 megawatts of electricity off of wood waste residuals, biomass, but also provides power and heat to our facilities. It's enough to power about 5,000 homes in the local area. Or another way to look at it is that we produce more power than we consume as a company annually. Speaker 2 (6:35) So that's really cool. And how does that work? Speaker 3 (6:38) You know, it's actually very old traditional technology. It's essentially like you would see with any steam engine. So we burn residual wood waste. About 50 % of that is actually urban waste and put it in a traditional boiler system. So it's 100,000 pound per hour boiler. So we burn it, take the water to superheated steam, and then we put it through a turbine generator. produce electricity down to the heat point that we need in order to produce, to use the heat for our facilities. And it's really a closed loop system. So it's very, very efficient. So first power and then heat for our facilities until the water, the steam is almost water again. And then we just keep it as a closed loop system. Cool. Cool. I Speaker 1 (7:28) mean, that's pretty, that's pretty interesting. And how did that idea come about? Speaker 3 (7:35) Well, you know, as with many things, it's a, there was a financial interest in it. We produce wood residuals, of course, because particularly the bark can be used for things like beauty bark for housing, right? You know, anything that you have in your garden and your landscaping and whatnot. So we do produce that as well. But the bark also has a lot of BTUs that can really help create energy. Speaker 3 (8:03) During that period of time, it was about 2006, Oregon had a program called the Business Energy Tax Credit, in which they were providing a tax credit for about 50 % of the overall project cost. So the project being about a $24 million project, Speaker 1 (8:20) it Speaker 3 (8:21) allowed us about a $12 million tax break. That's Speaker 1 (8:24) huge. Speaker 3 (8:25) That's nice. Speaker 1 (8:26) That's a good incentive. Speaker 2 (8:28) I mostly had first heard of you folks as a... Mass Plywood Panel Company, MPP, that's like the term that I've mostly heard. Today, is that really, is that like your flagship product or products? Is that mostly what you do or behind the scenes, maybe not behind the scenes, but or for you, is it actually a much broader spectrum of things? And Mass Plywood is simply one of those, you know, things that you offer. Speaker 3 (8:58) It's really just, it's actually a small portion of what we do right now, but we're hoping it turns into a much, much larger company and business defining product. So really by volume, our largest product is veneer that we still sell to outside producers. And then it's plywood, then our residuals. So bark dust, hog fuel, chips, sawdust. Speaker 2 (9:26) those Speaker 3 (9:26) types of products. Mass plywood is right now about 10 % of what we do, which is nice. I mean, it's a value-added product. It's very unique. So we have a special place in the industry and it's looking like it's turning into a much more consistent industry as well. So it's a good way for us to take the highest value veneers that we have that are the most density rated, the highest structurally performing, but also those that have an appearance quality. and utilize that ourselves for a little bit of a higher value. Speaker 2 (10:00) Can Speaker 1 (10:00) you explain for our listeners who are not familiar with what mass plywood is, what it is and how it's made? Speaker 3 (10:07) Sure. So the closest equivalent, of course, is cross-laminated timber, which we are certified as a cross-laminated timber panel. Traditionally in Europe, cross-laminated timber is a lumber-based product. But our particular innovation is... taking our veneers which are typical at a 1 8 inch thickness laminating those into an lvl or structural composite lumber so we can get very very consistent very accurate design values in both the major and minor force direction so both with your long span and also across the width of your panel and we do that in every one inch lamella that we use to construct our mass timber so We have several different grades. 2.0E, which is the E is a measure of your long span bending stiffness. So 2.0E is our highest grade. It's an all parallel panel. We have a 1.9E, which has a single crossband. So it starts to build additional strength to the minor force direction of the panel. Speaker 2 (11:14) And Speaker 3 (11:14) then we have our really more used panels are 1.6E. and our 1.0E, and they have very particular uses within the mass timber industry. But we essentially take all those different grades and based upon the use within a building, we will build up a large platform for use that we then run through a CNC machine and create the individual customizable parts for a building construction. So we can essentially make a mass timber panel anywhere from two inches thick to 24 and a half inches thick at 12 feet wide and 48 feet long. So a very, very large block of wood. Oh my gosh. Speaker 2 (12:00) So this is a dumb question, but like how much does something like that weigh? It's got to weigh a ton. Speaker 3 (12:06) Yeah. I mean, really, if you want to go for that type of solid panel, it's obviously you make it 24 inches thick and, and, uh, You know, 12 feet wide, 40, there's not many uses for that. But it's about 30,000 pounds. Speaker 2 (12:20) Yeah. That's cool. So, okay. So I'm going to kind of go back to some of the details you said to make sure that I heard, I understood. And then our audience does as well. So the different ratings has to do with the strength, but also you were saying the strength in one direction versus two. Is that right? So the 1.6 or the 1.whatever ratings that are, I guess, have a lower value in the long direction, but a greater value in the other direction, are those more used for floors and walls as opposed to beams, I guess? Speaker 3 (13:00) Yeah, no, you're going right in the correct direction. So our 1.9E material is... you know roughly equivalent to the same design values as you would typically see in a glulam okay so has the same type of application the only difference is well blue lambs are typically in plank orientation for their construction Speaker 2 (13:22) we're Speaker 3 (13:23) in joist orientation or in in a vertical orientation for the use of our panels got it for a beam or column application now the 1.6 e material exceeds the performance of a typical cross-laminated timber and the long span bending. So we can get a lot longer span with much less wood than you typically use with a lumber base panel. So just as an equivalent, our five inch panel can get you 15 to 16 feet in span based upon the loading. But it takes really a five ply or almost a seven inch panel for a cross-laminated timber to get to the same span. Speaker 2 (14:03) Interesting. And we're talking about, generally speaking, a live load on top of that? Speaker 3 (14:08) Yeah. Yes. Speaker 2 (14:10) Okay. Five inches. Speaker 3 (14:13) The 1.0E material is actually kind of interesting because you would think that there's not that many applications for a panel that has a dual span. But the particular projects that we're doing with this have been very successful. So right now we're making a project for a very good client down in Oakland named Oh Wow, in which they're specializing in creating multi-story, multi-family. at a very cost effective rate oh yeah i know they're really good people um but their particular use is as a point supported slab so essentially you've got a column support on each corner of the panel as well as mid-span and then there's no beam going across at all Speaker 1 (14:56) oh interesting so Speaker 3 (14:58) the panel is essentially the entire floor element and self-supporting um and it it really helps with construction because well one you have an unlimited ceiling height. So any sort of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, you can integrate into the structure however you want. You can also adjust the ceiling heights very easily because you only have a column to adjust. You don't have very complicated connections with the beam to column. Speaker 2 (15:25) So Speaker 3 (15:25) it makes it very quick to actually install these things. And our five-inch panel and six-inch panel can get to a 12-foot minor span and a 16-foot. major span so essentially our 48 foot panel has three columns going along the the length of it um and you know of course just two going across the width for a pretty decent room size for most construction yeah Speaker 2 (15:49) and Speaker 3 (15:50) that really exceeds the performance of any other cross-lamb and timber out there in that particular application and Speaker 2 (15:55) yeah that's perfect for like multi-family um and so the you know you had mentioned a couple times that uh What you guys produce, I'm probably using the wrong terms, but the mass plywood approach is stronger per depth compared to a cross-laminated timber because basically you're using the individual layers, the veneers, consistently all the way through as opposed to using larger chunks of lumber. Is that what it is? Speaker 3 (16:27) Yeah, there's actually several reasons in there, but let's say number one is the laminating effect. So if you break wood down into much smaller constituent parts and you're able to characterize what that wood looks like and how it performs, then you laminate like performing material to it, you end up exceeding the performance of wood itself. Speaker 2 (16:49) So you Speaker 3 (16:49) think about like a tree standing in the forest, it's going to have a stiffness value of... somewhere between 1.4 to 1.6 e for a Doug fir and it's going to be 120 feet tall and it's swaying in the forest so it has a significant amount of stiffness well like I mentioned we can start creating products that are 2.0 e and 1.9 e so the stiffness is dramatically improved the other thing that happens is that when we take this through our entire process we essentially get about what's called six to 8 % additional densification just due to compression of material with the resins. Speaker 2 (17:26) And Speaker 3 (17:27) then lastly, if you think about a piece of lumber, you're going to have a defect go through that piece of lumber in some format, right? A knot that goes through the entire board that weakens you the entire structural performance. Since we're essentially taking one eighth inch sheets and laminating those together. and randomizing the defects across the board, I mean, we're essentially eliminating the impact of defects because they're only one eighth of an inch thick. Speaker 2 (17:55) So when did the idea of a mass plywood approach come in? Because I've not heard of it outside of fairly recently and it being associated specifically with you. Are you like the only ones? Like who created this idea? And how did the idea come around actually? Speaker 3 (18:12) Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story. Back in 2015, we've been really feeling the impacts of foreign imported material into the U.S. market. Speaker 2 (18:26) And Speaker 3 (18:26) it's been going on for quite a while. And for the most part, people don't know where their wood products come from. Speaker 1 (18:33) So Speaker 3 (18:34) whether it's from China, Russia, Canada, Brazil, any other South American country. it's not like they have a preference to buy U.S. commodity plywood. And so at the same time, our state and federal government have consistently reduced the amount of timber harvest in Oregon. And so what we were seeing were escalating log costs with a declining margin on our typical commodity products. Speaker 3 (19:06) We had an opportunity to travel to Europe with Oregon State University to do an exploratory on what cross-limited timber looked like and how it was manufactured. And so it was my brother and I that went over there in 2015. And we essentially returned with the idea that... taking the concept that if LVL can outperform a standard lumber panel in a very technical application, then we should be able to create the same type of product out of our veneer that will outperform a cross-laminated timber panel. Speaker 2 (19:39) So Speaker 3 (19:40) we went into kind of a product development where we started changing orientations and density grades and coming up with different ways to make our panels longer and more performative. We took those down to Oregon State University and had them tested to see if we had a viable concept. And when it appeared we had, we actually were able to get a patent for the product and the process to create the first veneer-based mass timber panel in the marketplace. Speaker 1 (20:08) Wow. And Speaker 2 (20:09) this was 2000, the early teens, mid-teens? Speaker 3 (20:13) Yeah, 2015. Speaker 2 (20:15) That is really, really cool. Speaker 3 (20:17) Yeah, I mean, believe me, you know, we're a small family company. It's not like we have a R &D department. And really up until that point, we didn't even have a technical director that really understood wood science.