Crown Pacific To Build New Mill Impact On Jobs, Colburn Facility Unclear

Crown Pacific said Thursday it plans to build a $17 million sawmill at its Bonners Ferry mill site.

The announcement comes more than a year after the company closed the Boundary County sawmill with plans for creating a more cost-effective, flexible mill.

The new mill will be more efficient, although company officials had no word on how much it could increase productivity.

There is no word on how many jobs will be lost, or what will happen to the company’s Colburn mill once the new mill is finished.

“It all depends on the conditions 15 months from now,” said Fletcher Chamberlin, a Crown Pacific spokesman.

The new mill is scheduled to be finished by fall 1998. Engineers still are planning, but construction should begin this year, he said.

The 35-year-old Bonners Ferry mill has operated without major overhauls to the outdated equipment, he said.

Crown Pacific transferred all but 12 of its Bonner Ferry employees to its Colburn mill last year when it announced its improvement plans. There are 75 employees still operating the kiln and planer at the Bonners Ferry mill. The Colburn mill has 134 employees.

Once the improvements are completed, Crown Pacific plans to move those who previously worked at Bonners Ferry to the new plant.

Meanwhile, the Portland-based company said it plans to build a stud mill in Port Angeles, Wash., so it can harvest logs from its Olympic Tree Farm in Western Washington.

These improvements come after the company has closed three plants in the past two years.

It closed its Albeni Falls sawmill last June, because it was cheaper than overhauling its aging equipment. In October the company shut down its Redmond, Ore., plywood manufacturing facility. It closed its Thompson Falls, Mont., mill in 1995 after a fire destroyed remodeling efforts.

The company owns 783,000 acres of timberland in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

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