Waferboard Plant Closing Permanently

A waferboard plant north of Coeur d’Alene fell victim Friday to its small size and a saturated market for the sheeting product.

Louisiana-Pacific Corp., which has absorbed losses of $130 million since 1994, said it will permanently close the 13-year-old Chilco oriented strand board factory on July 10.

The decision kills prospects for the plant’s 115 employees to return to their good-paying jobs. It also eliminates a $3.1 million annual payroll from North Idaho’s economy.

“This has been a difficult decision.

We are saddened by the outcome and the impact it will have on the employees and their families,” operations manager Jim Lake said in a statement.

Company officials had said earlier that there was a chance the plant might be converted to a siding factory. But the production capacity of the 13-year-old plant has been dwarfed in recent years by monstrous new facilities in the U.S. and Canada.

“It’s unrealistic to hold out hope to our employees,” said Jim Beldin, human resources manager for Louisiana-Pacific’s North Region. “We have OSB plants with smaller capacity that find it difficult to compete with larger producers. This happens to be one of those.”

In the past year, the Portland-based forest products company has closed three OSB plants in the South as prices dropped more than $100 per thousand square feet, Beldin said. But a waferboard factory in Montrose, Colo., which had been slated for closure this year, was spared. It will become a siding manufacturer, Beldin said.

In its first-quarter report to shareholders, Louisiana-Pacific blamed lower sales and earnings on an over-supplied OSB market. Sales of OSB and plywood in the first quarter of 1997 declined to $190.6 million from $234 million a year ago.

Beldin said the OSB plant will be mothballed. However, the nearby Chilco sawmill, with 40 employees, will continue to operate.

Some waferboard workers were furloughed in January; others were laid off in May.

Laid-off workers will receive two weeks pay for each year of work, Louisiana-Pacific said. Employees also will be eligible for job training through their local Job Service office.

, DataTimes