C&D Lumber Co. said this week it will shut down its operation in Riddle, the fourth Oregon mill to announce closure plans in recent months.
The family-owned business said 93 workers will lose their jobs. The sawmill will stop operating May 2, according to Nick Johnson, whose family owns C&D. Some operations will continue for at least a few months longer while inventory is dried and run through the mill’s planer.
“There’s a lot of emotion all the way around. Yesterday was a hard day for all of us,” Johnson said Friday, the day after the closure announcement. Johnson said some employees have been at the mill for more than 30 years and worked with his grandfather and father.
C&D Lumber was founded in 1890 and has been at its current site, about 20 miles south of Roseburg, since the 1950s. The Johnson family said C&D’s sister company, Silver Butte Timber Co., will continue operating.
C&D blamed the pending closure in Riddle on “the unprecedented challenges facing the industry today,” including fluctuating market prices, rising operating costs and timber shortages. Johnson said some of C&D’s lumber is fetching the same price it did 20 years ago even as all other costs have soared.
“Within the last few months, we figured we would need to purchase Douglas fir logs at nearly half of the going market price in order to sell our lumber and break even. This clearly isn’t sustainable,” Johnson said.
Reduced output from public forestland, increased consumption by larger wood products manufacturers and the effects of the 2021 Private Forest Accord are squeezing smaller mills like C&D, according to Johnson.
“Everyone’s facing all of those issues to varying degrees. The timber supply situation is something our industry has been focusing on primarily because we’re getting hit from all angles,” said Matt Hill, executive director of Douglas Timber Operators, a regional forestry association.
Hampton Lumber closed its mill in Banks last fall, followed by the Rosboro Co. mill in Springfield and Interfor Corp’s mill in Philomath. It’s possible other mills may be weighing shutdowns, too, Hill said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t have any specific information about any specific mill,” he said.
Oregon’s wood products manufacturing sector had been relatively stable since the Great Recession, employing around 23,000 people. Employment has dipped slightly in the last year, but those numbers don’t fully reflect the recent spate of closures, which are set to eliminate at least 300 jobs altogether in mostly rural Oregon communities.
The mill closures should be a wakeup call to Oregon policymakers about the dangers of leaving forest management to the courts, Hill said. Forestland management is subject to nearly continuous legislation as the industry, environmentalists and regulators wrangle over policy goals and their implications.
“They’re not working for the economy and they’re not working for the environment,” Hill said. “We need to do different, and we need to do better.”
-- Mike Rogoway covers Oregon technology and the state economy. Reach him at mrogoway@oregonian.com.