Western Railroad Discussion > Georgia Pacific closing Coos Bay mill

Oregon Live is reporting Georgia Pacific today announced the imminent closure of its mill in Coos Bay, Oregon. Closure will happen in phases starting in June. G-P officials attribute the closure mostly due to competition for Oregon logs from Asia and the prolonged closure of the rail bridge over Coos Bay, which has forced them to truck the 70% or so of their output shipped by rail to a reload north of the bridge. Timing of this announcement is interesting in as much as the bridge from various reports either has or is about to reopen. In any case this will have a significant impact on Coos Bay Rail...I know G-P is not their only shipper but does anyone have a handle on what percentage of their traffic base this mill represents?

Not to be lost are the immense hardships the 111 families that will be losing their paychecks are about to endure.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone

I believe the CBRL bridge has been OOS for about a year. It was supposed to reopen some time ago, but I think the repairs have been more complicated than first thought. Whose mill is it in Coquille and were they shipping by rail too?

TJY

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/04/georgia-pacific-will-close-coos-bay-site-lay-off-111.html

The article says the bridge should be open in 2 weeks.

Posted from Android

Article says there may be other parties interested in taking over the mill. Of course, the buyers may not want to honor G-P's union contracts, which would explain why the mill "can't" be sold as a going concern.
 

Dammit!

icancmp193 Wrote:
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 Whose mill is it in Coquille
> and were they shipping by rail too?
>
> TJY

Roseburg Forest Products' plywood mill.  Most of their product is rail-shipped.

Keith in Roseburg

icancmp193 Wrote:
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 Whose mill is it in Coquille
> and were they shipping by rail too?
>
> TJY

Roseburg Forest Products' plywood mill.  Most of their product is rail-shipped.  RFP was one of the main forces in saving the line after CORP embargoed it and filed for abandonment.  That was during the Fortress Investments debacle.

Keith in Roseburg

This is awful news.  The mill isn't the only customer on the line, but I believe it is the biggest shipper by far.  Hopefully another group steps in and buys the mill.

I wouldn't get too excited. The GP mill is a very modern mill and closing, and then re-opening mills under a different name, is a way of doing business in Oregon. I suspect this mill won't be closed long, if at all, but the name will change, union contracts will get thrown out, and it'll continue with lower paid employees - I've seen this happen many times.

Now if this were an older mill requiring lots of upgrades, that would be concerning.

Are logs being exporting directly from the Coos Bay area?

Or are they invoking the general concept of exporting logs which makes the market price increase?

TCnR Wrote:
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> Are logs being exporting directly from the Coos
> Bay area?
>
> Or are they invoking the general concept of
> exporting logs which makes the market price
> increase?

No raw log exports currently from Coos Bay. Wood chips are being exported.

In the Phillipines they stopped shipping logs and lumber years ago. it was all hardwoods. They should, as they did in the phillippines require some sort of prossesing on a pecentage of the logs to be shipped off shore. This may help keep jobs here in the USA.

Its nothing new for the mills to point a finger at shipping logs overseas. They started doing that many years ago.
RB

rantoul Wrote:
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> Went into a Home Depot and bought 2x4's 'made in
> New Zealand' while GP is closing an Oregon mill
> that makes 2x4s....the New Zealand 2x4's were
> probably made from logs sourced in Alabama. Trade
> away.

You do know that New Zealand does have a pretty healthy lumber industry, right?

Wasn't there an issue over precision metric milling for some export lumber? The Japanese had super duper milling which gave better results.

Posted from Android

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Wasn't there an issue over precision metric
> milling for some export lumber? The Japanese had
> super duper milling which gave better results.
>
> Posted from Android

We had an interesting discussion about that on TO a few months ago and found that the Canadians had invested in newer lumber mill machinery that was happily sending metric, or requested dimensional whatever, lumber to the Asian countries. The USA mills had plenty of market but not so much lumber (perhaps near specific Mills), but would have been missing out on the international orders. Regardless, the USA seems to be happy to send raw logs overseas, perhaps from specific market areas.

There are plenty of differing USA markets or regions that can find plenty of reason for or againest an issue.

...and yes there was a time when Oregon actually ran out of marketable logs but that was back in the late 80's. that dried up the smaller mills but left the consolidation work to the larger Companies. There is a large land holder of marketable timber in Northern Califonia that is based in New Zealand.

Hmm no raw logs out of Coos Bay? Darn wonder where they were going last fall when I was across the street eating then? Or were they really chipped logs that looked like real ones? The chip pile was in a diffrent location and the ships that were waiting could only handle logs. And if a company closes down, reopens under a diffrent name because of either union problems or other reasons thats long been the way. Boise Cascade got rid of there trucking side at there WA plant years back that way.

TCnR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lackawanna484 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Wasn't there an issue over precision metric
> > milling for some export lumber? The Japanese
> had
> > super duper milling which gave better results.
> >
> > Posted from Android
>
> We had an interesting discussion about that on TO
> a few months ago and found that the Canadians had
> invested in newer lumber mill machinery that was
> happily sending metric, or requested dimensional
> whatever, lumber to the Asian countries. The USA
> mills had plenty of market but not so much lumber
> (perhaps near specific Mills), but would have been
> missing out on the international orders.
> Regardless, the USA seems to be happy to send raw
> logs overseas, perhaps from specific market
> areas.
>
> There are plenty of differing USA markets or
> regions that can find plenty of reason for or
> againest an issue.
>
> ...and yes there was a time when Oregon actually
> ran out of marketable logs but that was back in
> the late 80's. that dried up the smaller mills but
> left the consolidation work to the larger
> Companies. There is a large land holder of
> marketable timber in Northern Califonia that is
> based in New Zealand.

On a side note, not changing over to the metric system years ago places the US at a competative disadvantage. Nearly the entire rest of the world operates on the metric system.