Thread: Cruel Twists Seize Timber Country
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Old 13-09-2003, 05:42 AM
Larry Caldwell
 
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Default Cruel Twists Seize Timber Country
(mhagen) writes:
Crown's not a good example. Crown Zellerbach has been repeatedly
leveraged for cash payouts to relieve debt brought on originally by
corporate raiders back in the '80s. CZ was a pawn in the savings and
loan scams. They've sold off their paper mills, lands, dams and
themselves. The name changes about every six or eight years it seems.
They cut their North west forest at 35 years of age - and have built
high speed mills to blow thousands of small logs per day past the
headsaws with a minimum of labor involved. Their current incarnation as
Crown Pacific has been claiming to be barely breaking even for years but
still hauls logs like they were worth something.

Somehow I doubt that the little bit of federal wood is having much
impact compared to cheap wood imports.

That's what I wondered. If there have been any major federal timber
sales, I haven't heard about them. Rough and Ready Lumber in Cave
Junction closed this year because there haven't been enough logs coming
out of the Siskiyou National Forest to keep the last sawmill in the area
going. Meanwhile, of course, lumber imports are keeping log prices in
the cellar.

On the bright side, Roseburg Lumber has just announced plans to upgrade
their Dillard mill. When the upgrade is finished, it will have more
dimensional lumber capacity than any mill in the world. They are
installing high speed scanners and computerized saws that will sample
6000 log positions for maximum yield. Their output will be primarily
studs for the big box home store market. Roseburg Lumber bought out LP's
holdings in southern Oregon when LP moved operations back to the south.

Since Roseburg Lumber is a privately held corporation, their
profitability is nobody's business but their own, but they have closed a
plywood mill and a chipboard operation in the last year because of soft
market conditions. Competition from cheap imports is forcing them to
reposition themselves in the market.

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