#520 - TYLER FRERES, Vice President of Sales at Freres Engineered Wood
SUMMARY
This week, David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design are joined by Tyler Freres, Vice President of Sales at Freres Engineered Wood. The three discussed the origin of Freres Engineered Wood, the co-generation closed-loop system, the invention of Mass Plywood, CLT vs Mass Plywood Panel (MPP), using MPP in different climates, maintaining the quality of lumber, the process of working with Freres Engineered Wood, design & technical details, fire rating, speed of construction, best use case, common misconceptions, sustainability, material source & forest management, what’s next for Freres, and more. Enjoy!
ABOUT TYLER
Tyler Freres is the Vice President of Sales for Freres Lumber Co., Inc. He has worked directly in plywood manufacturing since 2004. In his veneer sales position, Tyler is responsible for selling and sourcing all veneer for Freres veneer and plywood operations. As an executive team member, he takes an active role in determining the long-term direction of the company. He began his career in the timber industry during his high school years when he held his first job cleaning grease out of logging equipment. After high school, Tyler attended Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, Texas, where he earned a B.A. in English Literature and a B.B.A. in Business Administration with Finance minor. During his college years, Tyler returned to Oregon each summer to work in every available timber industry job: millwright, dryer feeder, barker operator, green chain, core layer, log scaling and road crew. After graduation from SMU, Tyler attended Oregon State University College of Forestry. He and his wife Deana then spent a couple of years in France. While abroad, Tyler worked on his MBA. In 2016, Tyler conceived of and the company later created Freres’s Mass Plywood Panel (MPP). Tyler’s passion for the future of veneer is evident. “I believe that the veneer and panel industry has the greatest potential of transforming and producing innovative wood products to create the greatest structures at the lowest cost with the least environmental impact.”
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Freres Engineered Wood company origin.
(02:56) Co-generation closed looped system.
(05:39) Mass Plywood.
“The laminating effect. If you break wood down into much smaller constituent parts and characterize how they perform, then laminate like-performing material together, you end up exceeding the performance of wood itself. Through our process, we get about 6 to 8% additional densification just from compressing the material with the resins. And if you think about a piece of lumber, you're going to have a defect somewhere, right? A knot that goes through the board weakens its structural performance. Since we're taking one-eighth-inch sheets and laminating them together, we're randomizing those defects across the board and essentially eliminating their impact.” (13:41)
(15:05) Invention of Mass Plywood.
(18:52) CLT vs Mass Plywood Panel.
(22:59) Using MPP in different climates.
(24:33) Maintaining quality of lumber.
(28:08) Process of working with Freres Engineered Wood.
“A well-designed project will typically have about 5 to 7% waste. That's everything you cut off on the CNC machine, every window you cut out. In a very poorly designed project, you can be at 20%. We have to build our cost based on the gross volume of wood that goes into it, not the net. If we're able to help push design decisions that minimize waste and use our product efficiently, we can potentially save 20% of the overall project cost. I think that's in everyone's interest. We don't want to waste wood on our slab, and the customer doesn't want to pay for it. So the earlier we're involved, the better. We have engineers on staff and we're happy to work on design-build with any client, but typically the engineer of record wants to take control of the final engineering analysis.” (28:52)
(32:47) Design & technical details.
(39:20) Fire rating of MPP.
(40:09) Speed of construction with MPP.
(45:49) Best use case for MPP.
(48:33) Common misconceptions about MPP.
(51:59) Sustainable materials.
(53:50) What's next for Freres.
(57:46) Challenge of developing MPP.
(01:01:36) Material source & forest management.
“The overall problem we have, particularly in Oregon, is that we've got a large federal landowner that has chosen to neglect the forest. You have this additional biomass growth that, if we don't take out and turn it into good, usable products, then Mother Nature will. We've burned a million and a half acres in Oregon already this year, and it's only the end of July. What we've found over the last 30 years is that neglecting our forests is a bad choice. We need to be good, effective stewards of our forest resources, and we're here to do that. The problem is there's not the political will to go through those forest management techniques. So all we've seen over the last 30 years is a reduction in timber available for companies like ours. We have such a win-win opportunity here: we can manage our forests more effectively, create cheaper wood products that perform better, and create more resilient forests and more prosperous rural communities in Oregon.” (01:03:08)
(01:07:28) Tyler's favorite part of his job.
