Supplying Demand

Entrepreneur John Burson capitalizes on low grade opportunities in Northeast.

Not since the energy crisis of the 1970s has wood energy been in such demand—albeit in a different form today. Just as he did then, John Burson, 48, saw opportunity and responded by positioning his business to supply that demand. Then, it was firewood. In 2009, it is biomass for industrial boilers and microchips for the emerging pellet fuel industry.

In that 30-year interim, the owner of Rocky Mountain Wood Co. (RMW) turned a fledgling business into a highly diversified enterprise that uses and markets the entire tree. The company provides land clearing and harvesting services primarily to private landowners and produces boiler fuel, pellet chips, grade and pallet logs, firewood, playground mulch, landscape bark and mulch and topsoil.