North America - Page 3
Stay up to date with the latest North America updates from the global wood industryTurn off the lights. Save money! Stimson Lumber Company has been in business a long time, starting in the state of Michigan in 1850. The founder, T D Stimson, moved west, buying timber and establishing several mills throughout the region. Ownership remained within the family: Harold Miller, his grand-daughter's husband, headed the company when it made its move to the present location, a little valley bordering the Coast Range, one of the country's most productive timber areas. Earlier, the company bought timberlands there and half its present timber supply still comes from perpetually managed company lands.
Engineered wood plant is nation's newest That fire resulted in big changes for Murphy, a company that dates back to 1909. Drawing on that background of continuous improvement, president John Murphy not only decided to buy a Georgia-Pacific hardwood plywood operation to the north in Eugene, Oregon, but he chose not to rebuild the destroyed plywood plant his firm bought in 1985. In its stead, he determined to erect a modern US$60m engineered wood products operation - Murphy Engineered Wood Products - and it provides much better veneer utilisation than the old plywood plant. Market niches played a big part in both decisions. Particularly in today's weak market, a replacement under-layment mill was not a viable solution, while EWP could generate considerably more income from the raw material.
Something to celebrate The Association was organised in Portland, Oregon on May 16, 1933 as the Douglas Fir Plywood Association (DFPA) and held its first meeting a month later in Tacoma, Washington, where it has been headquartered ever since. Getting going wasn't easy, however. "I recall 1933, when the Douglas Fir Plywood Association took its first halting steps, as a daunting time for all but the most incurable optimists," remembered plywood industry pioneer and one-time DFPA President Norman Cruver when the Association celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1983.
Staying ahead Roseburg Forest Products, one of the US' largest family-owned forest industry companies, is located in Dillard, a small southern Oregon town of perhaps 5,000. Together with the headquarters, Dillard houses Roseburg's huge particleboard plant, along with the company's large sawmill, two big plywood mills - and others. Probably the most impressive feature of the Dillard plywood operation is plant #1's huge Raute six-deck, 23-section jet dryer which dries veneer for both Dillard mills. The new dryer can handle 21,000ft2, 3'8in basis, of veneer hourly. It replaced two much less productive dryers. Rick Ghramm, who manages both plywood plants at Dillard, commented, "That's been an awesome dryer for us".An RCO was installed to handle emissions.
Complete works for US machine manufacturer It is no secret that the US forest industry, chilled by a housing slump, is far from booming at present. Consequently staff in machine manufacturers served by the industry must use some imagination to keep their businesses on the move. One such is Mike Tart, sales manager of Globe Machine Manufacturing, which has been a fixture on Tacoma, Washington's waterfront since 1917. Mr Tart puts it succinctly when he says he will be travelling to more places requiring a passport. With a cool US market, his sights are set, like many others, across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as South America.
Fire sparked big changes Murphy lost its plywood plant in that fire, but gained not only a brand new engineered wood products mill (see p40), but also a long-established hardwood plywood operation at Springfield. The company's purchase of Georgia-Pacific's hardwood plywood mill there, owned by GP since 1967, brings new opportunities to Murphy in a specialised output, along with a well-experienced crew to operate it; about 30 workers and managers from the Sutherlin mill came to work in the hardwood plywood mill after the fire. The mill has 215 full time employees and many stayed on after Murphy's purchase. The mill has managed to maintain a two-week market file, despite current US market and economic problems.
Responsible buying So-called 'illegal logs' are a big topic among legitimate US mill people concerned about price cuts affecting their profits. Others, however, might be generating more profits through using illegal...
Playing the marketplace New plywood lay-up plants aren't popping up all over North America these days. Lowering housing starts, OSB competition and even raw material supplies are the leading factors limiting the...
A change of emphasis In a major move to streamline its operations, Tolko Industries Ltd closed the plywood section of its Kelowna, British Columbia, mill last January and, at the same time, modernised and speeded the...
Gas on tap Natural gas has been a popular heat source for veneer dryers, but escalating gas prices have cancelled out some of that heat source's advantages and caused mills to look for alternative fuel...
Chopin mill's new composition The Roy O Martin mill in the tiny timber town of Chopin, Louisiana, just got bigger with an entirely new Coe high speed small-log lathe line, dryer, lay-up line and press. This was a US$56m...
Learning the latest at Oregon State University
Chairman Jim Reeb of the sponsoring College of Forestry group welcomed the attendees and set them off on two days of instruction by a dozen US and Canadian university professors and industry...
Columbia Forest Products, with headquarters in Portland, Oregon, is the largest hardwood plywood and hardwood veneer producer in the US and the firm keeps ‘hopping’ to produce new products and...
Boise Cascade Company, now known simply as Boise, and formerly Boise Cascade Corporation, continues to advance its wood panel manufacturing operations in the Pacific Northwest of the US. The...
Where will all the capacity go?
When Canadian structural panel manufacturer Grant Forest Products Inc announced in June that it planned to build two greenfield OSB mills in South Carolina, it brought the number of new plants...
In the past several years since Simpson Timber Company’s venerable Shelton, Washington plywood plant was sold to Olympic Panel Products big things have happened all through the busy production...
McKenzie plant finds its own niches
McKenzie Forest Products has taken a creaky and outdated plywood mill in Springfield, Oregon, thoroughly studied its processes and marketing, and embarked on a dynamic modernisation programme...
Potlatch Corporation is a century old western US wood products company with 1.5 million acres of its own timberland, a situation that keeps it in business. Many others, dependent on federal...
Hardel Mutual ramps up production
The US Pacific Northwest plywood industry once had many worker-owned plants called co-ops (for cooperatives), but only two remain. One of these, Hardel Mutual in Chehalis, Washington is one of...
Spraying, stencilling and striping packs of panels is a messy necessity for wood based panel manufacturers. An Oregon firm is doing something about that with robotic methods it developed for...
