Over the past 27 years, PowerWood has built a substantial business based on relationships — treating our products as a service — and a passion for beautifying B.C.’s substantial wood resources.
PowerWood has grown from a one-person company started in 1995 to over 40 employees at our new remanufacturing facility in Agassiz, B.C., which is set up to produce a combination of specialty and commodity products and handle the entire process from raw material to finished products.
It all began in October 1995, when Steve Power founded PowerWood in the basement of his Coquitlam, B.C. home, purchasing lumber from mills and selling to American customers.
From the very beginning Steve focused on building the business through relationships and treating the products as a service, values that have been passed on from generation to generation at PowerWood.
The business grew steadily and within a few years Steve brought in quality control, admin and sales staff. All customized manufacturing was performed by businesses in B.C. and our inventory was stored in a leased yard in Surrey. By 2002, PowerWood had grown to roughly 21 employees and Steve purchased a 5-acre distribution yard in Surrey.
Our sales and customer base grew steadily for the next six years, which were some of the best years in the company’s history. Profits were reinvested in developing the lumber yard and equipment was added for in-house manufacturing. In 2006, we bought our first resaw and chop saw and by the summer of 2008 we had installed a Weinig moulder, and PowerWood was well on its way to becoming the manufacturer we are today.
In 2011, Steve Power retired and was succeeded by the ownership team of Jake Power and Dustin Elliott. Jake manages the sales force and Dustin the operations. Both have played a prominent role in rebuilding the operations of the company and both are committed to continuing to build PowerWood through exceptional quality, service and consistency.
When the Surrey site could no longer handle our rapidly expanding business, we began looking for a location that would allow us to further realize our vision of transitioning into specialty manufacturing.
In the summer of 2021, we moved to our new Agassiz facilities located on 12.2 acres in British Columbia’s beautiful Fraser Valley, on the traditional territory of the Cheam, Sts’ailes, Sq’éwlets and Seabird Island people. The new, larger remanufacturing facility allows us to increase both our workforce and our output, which will increase to 25 MMBF annually over the next few years, with a continued focus on adding value to B.C.’s fibre resources.
Our ability to ship finished products rather than rough green materials over long distances has reduced our carbon footprint and our impact the environment, and our ability to perform all processing and manufacturing locally is also of benefit to British Columbians, with lower carbon emissions resulting from being able to do everything closer to the source in our value-added sector.
At PowerWood, our passion for turning B.C.’s Western Red Cedar and Alaskan Yellow Cedar into products that look spectacular and last for 100 years resonates from the top to the bottom of the company. We encourage everyone to grow as an individual and as a professional, even if it takes them beyond PowerWood. We want people in the industry to know that this is a place to grow and learn.
The result has been some of the finest value-added Western Red Cedar and Alaskan Yellow Cedar products in the world.
