The shady corridors of Potlatch Corp.'s 17,000-acre poplar plantation near Boardman will soon echo with the sound of buzzing saws.
Spokane-based Potlatch is building a sawmill "right in the middle" of the tree plantation along Interstate 84 east of Boardman, one that will employ up to 55 people when it opens in late 2006, company spokesman Michael Sullivan said Tuesday.
The $8.1 million sawmill will produce about 30 million board feet of lumber per year, aimed at uses like furniture-making and nonstructural building elements, Sullivan said. It will run year-round, replacing a temporary sawmill that's been running on a small scale, he said.
The move marks a shift in Potlatch's strategy for the plantation, which began in 1993 with the idea of turning the poplars into chips for pulp mills. But the market price for wood chips didn't rise high enough for that plan to work, so in the late '90s the company shifted focus to selling the wood as lumber.
"You can't use it to make two-by-fours," Sullivan said. "It does not have the structural integrity to be used for that. But it is suitable for paneling, molding, cabinetry" and furniture, he said.
Potlatch plans to eventually run the plantation's entire output, about 340,000 tons per year, through the new sawmill, Sullivan said.
Hiring for the mill will almost quadruple the number of full-time employees at the plantation, which now stands at 15.
"We welcome that kind of growth in the area," said Boardman City Manager Rex Mather.
The plantation was the first among Potlatch's holdings in Oregon, Idaho, Minnesota and Arkansas to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, Sullivan said. The council is an international nonprofit that sets rules for sustainable, environmentally-friendly forestry operations.
"We believe there's a market for our FSC-certified hardwoods," he said. "That's one of the reasons we did that."
Potlatch got a $150,000 grant from the Oregon state Department of Economic and Community Development, Sullivan said.Tri-City Herald
