Louisiana-Pacific (LP) has permanently closed its OSB mills in Athens, Georgia and Silsbee, Texas, taking another 725 million ft2 of production capacity off the North American market.

During a recent conference call related to LP’s Q4 and full-year 2009 financial performance, coo Rick Frost said: “We made the decision to go ahead this quarter and put the permanently closed label on two of our OSB mills which had been in the indefinitely shut categor ¬ that is Athens, Georgia and Silsbee, Texas.

“This is about 725 million square feet of rated capacity that moves into the permanently shut graveyard that has been created by this downturn.”

Athens had an annual capacity of 375 million ft2/year and Silsbee had 350 million ft2/year, but Silsbee had been indefinitely curtailed since August 22, 2007, and the Athens mill had not operated since the Q4 of 2008.