by Web Editor | Jan 24, 2018 | News
While heavy rains were pelting Santiam Canyon Thursday afternoon, Jan. 18, there was a warm bustle of activity at one brightly-lit site between Lyons and Mill City.
Albany Eastern Railroad pulled into a rail stall. Representatives from a German manufacturer were fine-tuning equipment inside a covered, 4-acre plant. Employees of Freres Lumber worked with the visitors in a month-old mill to test tools ready to crank out an innovative product.
It’s been a busy year for the 95-year-old Freres Lumber Company: the construction of one mill; a blazing destruction of a drying facility, which was promptly rebuilt and is back in operation; and the marketing of a new product, Mass Plywood Panel. “This past year has been a trial for all of us,” Tyler Freres, the company’s vice president of sales, said as workers eddied around him tending to tasks, tackling everything from computer inputs to judicial placements of mass-panel resins.
The new Mass Plywood Panel plant grew from conception to a running entity in roughly 2 ½ years, including meeting an ambitious construction timeline. “We broke ground in March of 2017, and we had our first panel out in December of 2017,” Freres said, “And, of course, there was that fire in between.”
He saluted the busy crew scattered around the facility. “We couldn’t have done it without these guys,” he said. “Overall, it’s complicated to figure out all the details in a new plant, and these guys have been able to figure it out. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
From the Statesman Journal: https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/local/stayton/2018/01/20/freres-looks-future-production-mass-plywood-panels-santiam-canyon/1048864001/
by Web Editor | Mar 26, 2012 | Update
Arauco announced it will reconstruct the plywood mill that was destroyed by fire at its complex in Nueva Aldea, Chile.
“We know that the community, our workers and neighbors, expect us to rebuild these facilities, thus contributing to the development of the Region and the commune, by recovering job positions that were lost in this regrettable event,” says Iván Chamorro, Arauco’s public affairs manager.
Arauco estimates that construction and startup will take at least two years. The destroyed mill had an annual production capacity of 450,000 m3. Arauco didn’t report the planned capacity of the new facility.
Numerous forest fires erupted in the Bío Bío Region on December 31 and spread vastly due to high temperatures and strong winds. The blaze affected at least 7,000 hectares of Arauco’s plantation forests before reaching the Nueva Aldea complex, which included the plywood mill, a pulp mill, sawmill and biomass power plants.
Arauco shut down all of the plants and joined firefighting efforts that included more than 500 firemen within the industrial complex and its surroundings backed by seven airplanes and eight helicopters. Only the plywood mill was destroyed, and no casualties or employee serious injuries were reported by Arauco.
While announcing the planned rebuild, Arauco also indicated that 237 of the 661 operators that were directly affected will be relocated into other tasks or the design work of the new panel mill project. Regarding workers that cannot be relocated, Arauco will not terminate their jobs using the force majeure clause that can be used in these situations.
A training program is being developed in collaboration with the Chilean Labor Ministry to provide workers with better tools to enter into new job opportunities.
