Lumber remanufacturing in Alberta plays an important role in increasing the value of the province's wood fibre resource before it is exported, but it is facing challenges on several fronts. The high value of the Canadian dollar, softwood export taxes, and changing market demands all place pressures on producers. One Alberta lumber remanufacturer has responded to these challenges by re-tooling their plant with a state-of-the-art automated line. A payback period of 1.7 years was estimated based on early data. The new line removes most manual material handling by performing automatic grading, cutting, sorting, material movement, and stacking of products, and has cut the labour requirement of the lines it replaced from 31 workers per shift down to 14. Changeovers are done in 10 minutes or less, rather than the 30-90 minutes required for the old lines. Removal of the old lines and installation of the new one was completed in the course of approximately six weeks. The new line is now in its final implementation phase. Ramping up of production to its predicted amount of at least 170 000 fbm per shift has taken longer than planned, due to the plant's unfamiliarity with the new technology. The experiences of this company are shared to show the potential benefits and pitfalls that may be encountered when undertaking such an upgrade.