The Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and USDA Forest Service recently awarded $2 million total to six projects that highlight innovative architectural design and mass timber’s significant role in carbon reduction. According to SLB officials, lessons learned from each project will be shared with the construction community to help support future projects, including cost analyses, life cycle assessments and other research results.

Here are the buildings:

• New medical center in Vancouver, Wash.: 176,000 sq. ft., four-story mass timber over steel structure uses CLT and glulam.

• High-rise multifamily in downtown Denver: 12-story building with nine levels of mass timber. Features glulam columns and beams and CLT decks.

• Low income charter school, Long Island, NY: a five-story hybrid CLT building uses more than 36,000 cubic feet of CLT.

• New 42,456 sq. ft. industrial warehouse in Kent, Wash., features CLT panels and glulam beams and columns.

• Intro Cleveland Phase 2: Massive 750,000 sq. ft. mixed use development is the largest mass timber project in the U.S. Phase 2 will build a 16-story mass timber building with mass timber tower consisting of glulam columns and girders with CLT floor slabs. The team projects wood to comprise about 50% of the total structure.

• Three-story 18,780 sq. ft. office space building in Portland, Ore., with major goal of proving out the rocking shear wall system and showing how this advanced technology can exceed code and provide a cost-effective seismic solution for three to 12 story buildings.

Burlington, Wash.-based Pacific Woodtech announced the acquisition of Louisiana-Pacific Corp.’s EWP (I-Joist and LVL) division for $210 million. The acquisition includes LP laminated veneer lumber and I-Joist manufacturing facilities in Wilmington, NC; Red Bluff, Calif.; and Golden, British Columbia, associated timber license assets, and the SolidStart laminated strand lumber brand. The sale is targeted to close in early August.

The acquisition comes as PWT expands its North American engineered wood product offerings. “Adding Golden, Wilmington, and Red Bluff to PWT’s existing EWP business will propel the company into new growth,” comments President and CEO Jim Enright. “PWT continues to drive positive change at the cutting edge of engineered wood products, and this acquisition will provide a more streamlined and focused resource for the industry. We are working hard to make this a seamless transition, one that allows for the retention and care of current employees and clients and strengthens PWT’s position as a leading force in the EWP market going forward.”

PWT has experienced impressive growth in the industry since its inception in 1998, a result of its commitment to innovation and its sole focus on engineered wood products for more than 20 years.

“We believe that Pacific Woodtech is well positioned to invest in and grow the SolidStart brand, and its acquisition of LP’s EWP business marks another important step in LP’s ongoing strategic transformation,” says LP Chair and CEO Brad Southern. “We will work with Pacific Woodtech to ensure a smooth transition for our EWP employees, customers, and suppliers. I want to express my sincere thanks to the entire EWP team for their patience and professionalism throughout this process. I wish them all the best moving forward.”

Arauco has announced that it will invest $20 million to expand its thermally fused lamination (TFL) operations at its state-of-the-art particleboard mill in Grayling, Mich.

The new lamination line will be Arauco’s third TFL line at Grayling and will increase the mill’s lamination capacity more than 50% in support of the Prism TFL decorative surface product offering. The new line is expected to be commissioned and operational in late 2023.

“We are excited to continue investing in Crawford County and our Grayling operations. This investment further highlights our commitment to better serve the needs of our North American customers through value-add products,” comments Pablo Franzini, president of Arauco North America.

Panel World featured the entire original Grayling, Mich. complex in its January 2020 issue.

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George H. Weyerhaeuser Sr., who served as president and CEO of Weyerhaeuser Co. from 1966 to 1991 during an exciting period of wood products development while encountering new timber supply challenges brought on by an aggressive environmental movement in the Northwest, died June 11 in his sleep at home in Lakewood (Tacoma), Wash. He was 95.

Weyerhaeuser, who continued to serve as Board Chairman through 1999, was the great-grandson of Weyerhaeuser Co. founder Frederick Weyerhaeuser.

Weyerhaeuser oversaw significant growth of the company, including a number of major timberland acquisitions, and had an enduring impact on the evolution of forest management at Weyerhaeuser and across the industry. He was also instrumental in the development of international relationships and markets, especially with Japan.

Weyerhaeuser led a reorganization and cultural change at Weyerhaeuser in the early 1980s that streamlined the managerial process toward quicker decision-making at the operations level. He also oversaw the company’s strong push into engineered wood products.

In the mid 1980s Weyerhaeuser said, “There is a revolution going on in what used to be traditional forest products markets. I could go down all of our major product lines and I could tell you what we have going on, but I’ll just tell you that if we move forward five, six, seven years we’re going to be experiencing a completely new set of products which are going to be designed with properties built into them and those properties are going to be developed by different kinds of fibers and overlays mixtures right in the basic products.”

Also in the 1980s Weyerhaeuser led the company’s movement toward more independent logging contractor operations and less emphasis on company logging operations.

Sketch appeared in Seattle Business magazine, November 1986

“With the changes in our logging areas, somewhat more scattered, smaller timer, we need smaller more flexible operations,” he said. “When we looked at the option of reinvesting in a very large set of company operations we found the answer to be very easy to arrive at. We had to get a good deal more competitive and in doing so we’re going to downsize and put in a major amount of contracting.”

It was said of Weyerhaeuser, “His personal presence was powerful. He was honorable, confident and optimistic. He liked to focus on getting things done. He wanted his office to be out on the floor with his executive team, working in the daily grind of decision-making and policy formation. He liked people. When you were with him, you would feel his warmth and his focus on you. This was great motivation for people around him.”

Weyerhaeuser was born on July 8, 1926 to Helen Walker Weyerhaeuser and J.P. (Phil) Weyerhaeuser Jr. During the early years of his life, the family lived in Idaho, and then moved to Tacoma in 1933.

Fame came to Weyerhaeuser very early in his life as an 8-year-old child when during the Depression, in May 1935, he was kidnapped. The kidnappers took him while he was on his way home from elementary school in Tacoma, and held him for eight days in various trunks and closets and even in a freshly dug pit in the ground. He was ultimately left on the side of a forest road and walked to a farmhouse, whose inhabitants reunited him with his family.

Weyerhaeuser did not let that experience derail his life nor cloud his feelings toward other people. When speaking to Sports Illustrated in 1969, he said, “A boy is a pretty adaptable organism. He can adjust himself to conditions in a way no adult could. It didn’t affect me personally as much as anyone looking back on it might think.” Years later he wrote the parole board supporting release for one of the kidnappers, and offered him a job to help his transition back into society.

Weyerhaeuser went to the Taft School in Watertown, Conn. for high school and later served as a Trustee for the school. He served in the Navy from 1944-46, a young entrant as the war was winding down. He studied engineering and received a B.S in Industrial Administration from Yale University in 1949. Weyerhaeuser married Wendy Wagner on July 10, 1948.

In the early years of his career he worked in mills in Longview, Wash. and Springfield, Ore., and then moved up to positions of manager and vice president in several divisions of the Weyerhaeuser Co. He became a young CEO for Weyerhaeuser Co. at age 39.

Weyerhaeuser worked for years on a plan to build a new Corporate Headquarters in Federal Way, Wash., that used an open floor plan to encourage communication across departments and centralized management. The building was at the forefront of modern design for a corporate work setting and won awards including one for environmental merit.

Weyerhaeuser served on the Boards of The Boeing Co., SAFECO Corp., Standard Oil of CA, and The Rand Co.. He was a member of The Business Roundtable; Council on Foreign Relations; Board of Visitors, UPS School of Law; Advisory Board, Graduate School of Business Administration, U. Of Washington; Japan-California Assn.; The Business Council; the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco; and the Washington Council on International Trade, among others. There was an oil tanker named for him by Chevron while he was serving on that board.

After decades of being an avid tennis player, he spent his final years watching the tennis channel, doing sudoku and reading The Economist. George was predeceased by his sisters, Ann Pascoe and Elizabeth (Wiz) Meadowcroft; his brother, J.P. (Flip) Weyerhaeuser Jr.; and by his wife of 66 years, Wendy, who passed away in 2014. He was also predeceased by his son, George Weyerhaeuser Jr., in 2013 and his grandson Karl Griggs in 2014. He is survived by his children: Merrill Weyerhaeuser (Patrick Welly), David Weyerhaeuser (Sarah), Phyllis Griggs, Sue Messina (Bob Newkirk), daughter-in-law Kathy McGoldrick, Leilee Weyerhaeuser (Damian Rouson), 15 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

A memorial service is being planned but no date has yet been set.

Boise Cascade Co. has reached an agreement to acquire Coastal Plywood Co., including plywood mills in Havana, Fla. and Chapman, Ala., from Coastal Forest Resources Co. for $512 million, subject to certain closing adjustments. The two facilities employ 750.

“This acquisition incrementally expands our veneer capacity in support of our customers,” says Nate Jorgensen, CEO, Boise Cascade. “Near term, it provides us the ability to optimize our existing engineered wood products (EWP) asset base. Longer term, we are excited to fully integrate this strategic venture and we intend to invest $50 million into our Southeast operations over a three-year period to further our EWP production capacity.”

Travis Bryant, CEO of Coastal Forest Resources Co., states, “Coastal has a long history of manufacturing quality products and a strong reputation in the markets we serve. This transaction represents an opportunity for our talented and dedicated employees to join a dynamic organization, offering them a secure future with great opportunities ahead.”

“These are well-invested and managed plants that fit nicely into our existing footprint of integrated facilities in the Southeast,” adds Mike Brown, executive vice president, Boise Cascade.

The scope of the transaction does not include Coastal’s parent company or timberlands assets. Closing of the acquisition is expected in the third quarter of 2022.