Vaagen Timbers Changes Ownership 

Russ Vaagen, CEO and founder of cross-laminated timber and glulam producer Vaagen Timbers in Colville, Wash., reports on his podcast Forest to Frame that he and the minority shareholders have entered into an agreement to sell Vaagen Timbers to Vaagen Brothers Lumber of Colville.

Vaagen Brothers Lumber is the longtime Vaagen family sawmill operation, for which Russ Vaagen served as vice president until forming Vaagen Timbers seven years ago.

“The market for mass timber and construction in general has been very poor and I think all of us in the construction space are struggling,” Vaagen comments. “Our mass timber orders were down significantly and we were focused more on making glulam work but even that market was down.”

Referring to the sale, Vaagen says the glulam business aligns very well with the dimension lumber business. It’s Vaagen’s understanding that Vaagen Brothers Lumber will manage the business and continue to support the mass timber projects Vaagen Timber has under contract and will take a closer look at mass timber in general.

“I think there’s some opportunity in single family mass timber where a plant like the one we have here in Colville can compete,” Vaagen says. “We delivered some incredible buildings, and some incredible products, and we feel like we were producing as good or better product than anybody in the industry. So Vaagen Timbers will still have that know-how and bring that to the market.”

Vaagen adds, however, that it’s going to take the construction market to turn around, with interest rates coming down down to incentivize projects to go forward both in construction as a whole and with mass timber.

“Once we have a strong market we’re going to see more and more mass timber and we know this because there continues to be the pace of design of projects,” Vaagen says.

“I’m grateful that Vaagen Brothers is able to step in and I think having the integrated approach is going to make them successful in particular in glulam and potentially in mass timber.”

Vaagen says he won’t be staying on with the realigned Vaagen Timbers, but anticipates his team will stay in place, with some possible restructuring, to make the business financially viable.

Meanwhile Vaagen says he will be providing some exciting news soon as to his work moving forward, dealing with forest restoration and building significantly more infrastructure near federal forests.