Plum Creek Suspends Operations at Stud Manufacturing Mill


Columbia Falls, Montana, USA, 23 September 2008 -- Plum Creek’s finger-joint stud manufacturing facility in Kalispell, Montana, will suspend operations for the rest of the year. The company will monitor the market to determine if and when demand for the remanufactured wood product made by this plant increases sufficiently to warrant resuming production.

Twenty four positions at the small mill, referred to as the “FJ Reman” plant, will be affected. Those employees will have the opportunity to apply for open Plum Creek positions in the Flathead Valley. These employees also will be given priority if they apply for Plum Creek jobs in the future. Employees who do not secure other positions within Plum Creek will receive severance benefits.

Employees were informed of the change today, which will go into effect on 30 September.

“This specialty wood product is used almost exclusively in new residential construction,” said Hank Ricklefs, vice president for Northern Resources and Manufacturing. “Market prices are depressed and don’t currently cover the costs of production. We reduced shifts in January, hoping to avoid a production stop, but unfortunately the market has not changed. We will re-evaluate the FJ Reman business throughout 2009 to determine if we can resume production at this facility.”

Plum Creek is the largest and most geographically diverse private landowner in the nation. It has approximately 8 million acres of timberlands in major timber producing regions of the United States and 10 wood products manufacturing facilities in the Northwest. The company owns and manages more than 1.2 million acres of forestland in Montana, and has committed more than 600,000 acres of land to conservation in the state since 2000. For more information, visit www.plumcreek.com.