Comact: Building Confidence in a Global Market

For over 100 years, Comact has been a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of wood processing equipment. Today, its combination of industry expertise and advanced technology helps give wood-processing facilities the confidence they need to compete in an ever-evolving global market.

NHLA had the pleasure of speaking with Sylvain Dionne, Senior VP Sales and Customer Experience, and Anne-Marie Lévesque, Senior VP, Innovation & Marketing, of Comact to discuss the company’s global expansion, deep industry expertise, and confidence-building customer approach.

“Comact’s evolution has been built over more than a century of working closely with wood producers and continuously adapting to the industry’s changing needs. What began in Quebec as an equipment manufacturer has grown into a company with more than 2,000 specialists and capabilities spanning mechanical equipment, automation, optimization, digital technologies, engineering, project execution, cutting solutions, and lifecycle support,” Dionne explains.

A major part of that evolution has been Comact’s ability to combine wood-processing knowledge with technology.

“Today, we can support customers with anything from an individual machine or modernization project to a complete greenfield facility, while increasingly connecting equipment, data, vision systems, AI, and automation,” Dionne continues. “At the same time, our geographic reach has expanded significantly. While North America remains our largest market, we are increasingly active internationally, including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and other emerging wood-processing regions.”

Yet Comact’s expansion is about more than geographic reach. The company increasingly approaches wood-processing operations as an interconnected system.

“We bring together process expertise, mechanical engineering, automation, optimization, AI and vision technologies, digital solutions, project execution, cutting solutions, and aftermarket support,” Lévesque says. "Ultimately, the brand represents the combination of deep industry expertise and technology, with a focus on helping customers improve performance throughout the life of their operations."

That integrated approach becomes particularly important in highly diverse hardwood markets, where species, log characteristics, end products, and production practices vary significantly across regions. One common characteristic, however, is the focus on maximizing value from the raw material rather than simply maximizing volume.

For Dionne, customer confidence is essential to the successful adoption of new technology.

“Before relying on technology to make or influence these decisions, producers need confidence that it can consistently recognize the characteristics that matter to their specific products and markets. Hardwood producers face many of the same pressures we see across the wood processing industry: rising operating costs, workforce shortages, and the need to improve productivity and recovery rates. The opportunity for technology is significant, but successful adoption requires demonstrating its performance and building confidence over time.”

Comact starts with the customer’s process and raw material rather than with a predefined solution. Species, wood characteristics, product mix, production objectives, labor availability, and local requirements all influence how equipment, automation, and optimization should be designed and configured.

To help customers validate the technology before investing, they can test their own material with Comact. This allows them to evaluate detection performance on customer-specific species and products, while also quantifying the potential recovery and return on investment. Just as importantly, it helps build confidence in the technology before it is deployed in production.

Local safety standards, regulations, and operating practices are also incorporated into the engineering and execution of each project. At the same time, automation can allow skilled employees to shift their attention toward higher-value activities elsewhere in the operation.

“Our approach is not to apply the same solution everywhere,” says Dionne, “but to combine proven technologies with the specific requirements of each operation.”

One example of Comact’s expertise and customer service is Maine Woods Company, a hardwood producer in northern Maine that primarily processes hard maple and yellow birch. They implemented Comact’s AI-powered TrimExpert™, a board trimmer optimizer with species identification and grading technology, to automate and improve their grading process.

Before implementation, Maine Woods worked closely with Comact to test their own material and validate the technology’s ability to recognize the defects and characteristics that matter to their operation.

“Our grade specialists then worked with Maine Woods to fine-tune the system for both NHLA grades and their proprietary grades. That validation process was particularly important in building confidence in the technology before relying on it in production,” says Lévesque.

Since startup, the system's accuracy and consistency have enabled Maine Woods to reallocate employees to areas where they are needed most and operate with a leaner team without compromising quality or production rates.

For Lévesque, this project is a strong example of how AI and vision technologies can create value in hardwood manufacturing, “not simply by automating a task, but by combining technology, wood-processing expertise, and close collaboration with the customer to address real operational challenges.

That emphasis on close collaboration also extends to Comact’s membership in NHLA. “NHLA provides us with an important connection to the hardwood industry and the companies, people, and market dynamics shaping its future,” Dionne says. “For Comact, membership is valuable not only from a business development perspective but also because it helps us listen. As we continue to expand our capabilities and geographic reach, understanding how hardwood producers operate, where they invest, and what challenges they face is essential.”

As Comact continues to grow internationally, organizations such as NHLA help the company stay connected to the industry and ensure their technology strategy remains grounded in the realities faced by wood producers. For a company that has spent more than a century adapting alongside its customers, that connection remains an important part of building confidence in what comes next.

To learn more about Comact, visit www.comact.com.