A new manager is settling in at the Moosewood Millworks hardwood flooring company in Ashland, looking for a rebounding housing market and interest in natural, wood floors.
This is the first full Aroostook County winter for Scott Ferland, the general manager at the Maine Woods Co. LLC and Moosewood Millworks since April of 2016. The weather is not that much different from Hartland, Vermont, where Ferland spent the last 25 years working for the hardwood lumber company Cersosimo.
“I love it,” said Ferland, who lives in Portage and oversees two mills with about 90 employees. “Moosewood has a great story. It really is from forest to floors.”
A part of the Pingree family’s Seven Island Land Company since 2012, Moosewood Millworks complements the Maine Woods Co. hardwood lumber business, making what the company says is the only “fully integrated hardwood manufacturing complex in the northeastern U.S.”
The Moosewood mill makes solid hardwood floors from maple and birch harvested in the North Maine Woods, with finished and un-finished products sold in Northeast markets. The mill takes lower-grade hardwood lumber from the Maine Woods Co. mill, and dries and molds it into floors. With 24 employees, the facility produces about 3 to 4 million square feet of floors annually.
The market for hardwood floors currently is “very challenging,” with maple in particular being out of favor, Ferland said.
“In the next five years, I certainly hope and feel that hard maple is poised to rebound steadily. Maple is a beautiful product. New homes will continue to be steady and hardwood flooring will have a challenge to be the choice, because there’s so many options. A lot of them represent themselves as looking like wood. That will be a growing challenge.”
Ferland noted that the flooring is from sustainably managed forests, and that hardwood floors are “made to last generations,” unlike vinyl and other synthetic materials.
“We’re trying to make a good product and good jobs. We want to be a long-term employer that services the forest, employees and the people. We’re going to keep working towards it.”
