Martco Rises To The Occasion

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-In-Chief, Panel World

There’s never a dull moment with Martco, also known as RoyOMartin. In fact you might say that the company’s past 10 years have been highly electric—filled with major announcements, achievements and celebrations. Just when you’re thinking that the panel industry may have hit a lull in the action—as most of us have been thinking this year—here comes Martco, again, to keep it interesting.

Let’s go back to February 2015. Already operating an OSB mill in Oakdale, La. and a plywood mill in Chopin, La., the company announces it will build an OSB mill in Corrigan, Texas, about a three hour drive due west of headquarters in Alexandria, La.

Celebration I: In April 2018 the Corrigan mill produces its first OSB.

Celebration II: Chairman and CEO, and legendary figure, Jonathan Martin, dies at age 70 on September 20, 2019.

Wait, celebration? Sure it is. As Jonathan’s obituary stated, he had “finished his work for Christ on Earth and was called home by his Savior.” And given the spiritual culture that permeates the Martco operations, it was definitely a “celebration.”

In August 2021, Martco announces it will build another OSB mill at the Corrigan site.

Celebration III: The company marks its 100th anniversary in 2023, dating back to its first wood products operation, a sawmill in Alexandria, La., purchased in 1923 by family patriarch Roy O. Martin, Sr. A gala for employees, shareholders, retirees and other stakeholders is held in Alexandria.

Celebration IV: The newest Corrigan mill, called Corrigan II, produces its first board in June 2024, followed by a ceremony in late October, which has just happened as you read this.

Also in 2024, the company announces a $30 million investment in the Oakdale OSB mill, while making continued investments in the Chopin facility.

These milestones don’t mention the leadership transition that has been occurring in the past 10 years, kicked into high gear upon Jonathan Martin’s death, with Roy O. Martin III fully taking the helm, but already transitioning quickly toward the day when a “Martin” is not the captain, and the likes of a Scott Poole and Terry Secrest and other members of the leadership team and their successors continue to steer the company into its second 100 years.

Let’s Hear It For The Ladies

Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Editor, Panel World

One of the things I noticed when I joined the Panel World staff at the ripe ole age of 23 was how often I was the only woman in the conference rooms of the mills I visited. There’d be a female secretary, maybe one or two ladies out on the manufacturing floor, but that was rare. Thankfully, the landscape has changed in the decade plus I’ve been stomping around wood-based panel plants. More and more women are on production floors and in salaried positions—aligning with the Manufacturing Institute’s 35×30 campaign, which aims to increase the percentage of women in manufacturing to 35% by 2030.

Earlier this summer I made the trip to Louisiana-Pacific’s siding plant in Hayward, about two hours from my family’s cabin in northern Wisconsin. A welcomed break from family time—I mean how much fishing can my twin 10-year-olds do, you ask? 16 hours per day apparently. And imagine my pleasant surprise as I was talking “fun facts” with Plant Manager Brett Wienen that corporate-wide in LP, the most tenured female team member was on his staff.

She’s Wanda Headley, currently Hayward’s Supply Chain Planning & Fulfillment Manager, though Wienen says over her career she’s “done pretty much everything.” Having started with Hayward in December 1984, she’s closing in on 40 years. Back then, LP’s organizational structure was split into regional offices, and Headley got her start as an administrative assistant for the Northern Regional office located in Hayward. After a year, she moved over to the LP Hayward mill and hasn’t looked back.

According to Headley: “Back when I started my career with LP there were very few women in management or on the mill floor. That has changed dramatically within the last 10 years or so.” A sign of the changing times, of course, but most importantly a good reminder that hard work and dedication are not gender-specific.

Thanks to Headley’s consistent presence she’s been able to travel to nearly all of the facilities in the LP portfolio (including the Nashville corporate offices) to help train others on the coordination of production with the facility’s team and the planners at LP’s corporate offices.

Women still only make up less than a third of the manufacturing workforce. I’m so proud to come across careers like Headley’s that prove Rosie the Riveter all those decades ago was right: We Can Do It!

When In-Person Trade Shows Were Doomed

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World

For some years, even before the COVID pandemic, equipment shows had come under the gun. Some people were saying: No need for them. Why waste the money? Everything you need is already on the website. Indeed it seemed that such shows might be on the wane. We heard this kind of talk at the Timber Processing & Energy Expo (TP&EE) we produce every other year in Portland, Ore. And we heard it at other equipment shows where we regularly exhibited.

Then came the pandemic. Everybody had to cancel their trade shows. Whether you liked them or not, now you couldn’t go. Suddenly they didn’t exist. Well, they kind of existed.

I believe they were called “virtual” trade shows. I was bombarded with e-mails from companies that were now in the virtual trade show production business. When you visited the trade show, you entered a 3D virtual lobby, with a lot of signage and “virtual” people standing around. Then you entered the exhibit hall and could comb through each of the exhibits, click on one of them, call up their profiles and product offerings, chat with one of their representatives. Even put one of their products in your shopping cart and make a purchase. “Hey, I’ll take one of those gang saws.” “Credit card number please…”

I couldn’t quite get past the artificial people. It reminded me of the fake people they used to produce certain scenes in the movie Titanic. If you look real close…they’re not real. Seriously, it was a noble attempt to create a social platform during a period of social hibernation. But we weren’t interested in doing one for TP&EE. We’re a little old-fashioned around here. About the closest we got, after we were forced to cancel our 2020 show, was to allow all of the exhibitors to post short videos on our show website.

I assume virtual trade shows are still being done and I would imagine that their capabilities have become quite creative.

In the meantime, since the end of the pandemic, it seems that in-person trade shows have had a resurgence. There’s a lot of enthusiasm at these events. The pandemic reminded people that it’s a lot more fun and professional to meet with people in person. Body language is an essential part of communication.

We resumed our in-person TP&EE in 2022. Though traditionally the event has been heavier to the sawmill crowd, it had a good turnout from the panel mill people. We expect more of the same this September 25-27 at the Portland Expo Center. I see exhibitors that also cater to the panel and engineered wood products industry like Westmill, USNR, Samuel, Raute, Imal, Grenzebach, BE&E, Murray Latta, Spartek, Altec and many others.

We hope to see you there, for real.

Number Nine Was Very Fine

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World

Everybody seemed to have a really good time at the recent Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo (PELICE) in Atlanta, from beginning to end, as the accompanying photos on this page would indicate.

PELICE wasn’t “brought to you” by Stella beer, but it sure looked that way, once Roy O. Martin of Martco placed three Stella beers on the first morning keynoters tables. As Martin explained, he was letting the world know that he pays off his bets, which in this case was an annual bet with the wife of yours truly on the LSU-Alabama football game, won last year by Alabama. The bet—a case of Stella—actually started some years ago between Roy’s late first cousin, Jonathan Martin, and my wife, May, and since Jonathan’s departure Roy has taken it on. You would be hard-pressed to find bigger LSU and Alabama fans than the Martins and my wife, respectively.

As an Auburn fan, well, I just have to put up with it.

While Stella kicked off the conference, the event ended with the traditional drawing out of a tumbler full of business cards for $500 cash. You have to be present to win, and Howard Hall of Huntsman, shown standing at right in the photo, indeed was, accepting the goods from Panel World Senior Editor Dan Shell. The rest of the audience as usual responded with a chorus of boos, and quickly headed for the exits, putting the final punctuation on the ninth PELICE.

PELICE is a relatively short event, lasting a day and a half, and it’s really a sprint from beginning to end for everyone to get the most out of it. And there’s a lot to get from 35 presentations, 100 exhibitors, and the numerous producers in attendance. Speaking of producers, a special thank you goes to the following producer companies that sent their personnel to PELICE. Sorry if we’re missing one or two, but here you go: Arauco—ATCO Wood Products—Boise Cascade—CalFibre—CIPA Lumber—Columbia Forest Products—Georgia-Pacific—Godfrey Forest Products—Gregory Log & Lumber—Hasslacher—Hood Industries—Huber Engineered Woods—Hunt Forest Products—JELDWEN—Langboard—Louisiana-Pacific— Mercer International—Pacific Woodtech—Peak Renewables—Plummer Forest Products—PotlatchDeltic—Roseburg—RoyOMartin—Scotch Plywood—States Industries—Tafisa Canada—TimberHP—Tolko Industries—West Fraser—Weyerhaeuser.

The next PELICE will be held April 16-17, 2026, and it will be the 10th PELICE since its inception in 2008. I’m sure there will be a special anniversary celebration. You can bet on it!

Forest Products Industry Says Goodbye To Walter

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World

 

Walter Jarck, whose career in the forest products industry spanned 65 years and ranged from logging machinery to engineered wood products, died January 3, surrounded by his children, in North Wilkesboro, NC. He was 92.

 

Jarck spent the last two decades of his life trying build a high scale, commercial production TimTek (formerly Scrimber) composite lumber manufacturing facility, and nearly pulled it off; but long before then as a forest engineer he was a pioneer innovator of pulpwood loading and forwarding machinery, and log harvesting and processing machinery.

 

Jarck was born on May 7, 1931 in Queens, New York, and learned a hard work ethic from his immigrant parents. It was when he moved with his mother to the Catskill Mountains of New York that he fell in love with the woodlands.

 

He graduated in 1953 from the New York College of Forestry at Syracuse and entered Naval Officer Candidate School. He became a destroyer officer and ultimately retired from the Naval Reserves as a Captain. He recalled while in the Navy working with ships and mechanical, propulsion, steam and hydraulic systems.

 

Upon leaving the Navy he went to work for Caterpillar Tractor Co. as a logging engineer and spent a year in their sales training program and experienced the welding, mechanical and engine shops and was involved in the development of root rakes. “By the time I left I knew how a scraper was built, how a bulldozer was built, so I was really turned on by that,” Jarck said.

 

In 1958 he moved to the South and went to work as a forest engineer for Bowater, which was building a paper mill in Catawba, SC. “My boss said, ‘we have a six hundred million dollar paper mill being built and we’re going to be relying on the sweat of a few laborers to hand load and to bring wood in. There’s got to be a better way.’”

 

While Jarck was supervising the construction of buildings and wood yards for the new mill, he started looking at ways to mechanize logging equipment, which would alleviate the traditional practice of mills having to stockpile six months of logs in their wood yards to overcome the winter weather.

 

In the early 1960s Jarck led the development of the Go Getter pulpwood forwarder and in the mid 1970s working with Charles Allen the Allen Jarck Harvester for felling pulpwood and processing it into sticks, an early version of today’s cut-to-length machinery.

 

In 1982 Jarck joined Georgia-Pacific as assistant vice president and senior forester. He was involved in policy making and in several acquisitions. He retired in 1996 from Georgia-Pacific as corporate director of forest resources and then taught industrial forestry courses at the University of Georgia for several years.

 

Jarck was far from retired. In 2001 he and partner Geoff Sanderson acquired the world rights to the Scrimber technology from the Australia government interests that invented it in the mid 1970s. Scrimber was produced from small plantation trees to form a reconsolidated wood product with uniform properties comparable to sawn timber.

 

Jarck and Sanderson formed TimTek (they didn’t purchase the Scrimber name) and their newly formed company purchased the pilot plant in Australia and relocated it to the campus of Mississippi State University.

 

They wanted to build a true scale plant that would produce a product up to 48 in. in width, up to 6 in. in thickness and almost any length. TimTek beams, they said, would compete favorably in the large sizes for trusses, garage door headers, joists, rimboards and long-span structural timbers.

 

Jarck wrote: “Our process can best be summarized by crushing the debarked small diameter stems in a scrimming mill, then drying the scrim or mat of fibers, adding adhesives, collating the mats, steam pressing, then cutting to size and finishing. The resource can be softwood or hardwood in the 4-8 in. diameter classes. Resources of this nature are available at delivered prices that are one-fourth or one-fifth the cost of resources purchased in the sawtimber or veneer log categories.”

Taking Stock: The Long Pedigree Of Toil

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World

The engineered wood products industry is a small world, when you consider the few number of EWPs that have made it into the commercial mainstream.

One product that comes to mind that never found its footing is Scrimber. A researcher with an Australian governmental group is credited with inventing the product in the mid 1970s. It was an engineered lumber produced from small trees, and said to have uniform and construction strength properties for traditional lumber, beams and header applications. Logs in the 3-8 in. diameter range produced from early radiata pine thinnings were debarked and run through a scrimming machine where the log was crushed to form a mat of interconnected long strands, followed by drying, adhesives application and steam pressing.

Georgia-Pacific took a look at it but backed off. In 2000, a former GP corporate director gained rights to Scrimber research and technology, renaming the product TimTek, and a couple of years after that principals with Shuqualak Lumber in Mississippi formed Loblolly Industries in anticipation of starting a plant in Meridian, Miss. to produce Scrimtec, their new nomenclature for Scrimber-TimTek.

To this day, you continue to hear Scrimber development rumblings— more dimensional stability, greater fire retardancy, hardwood Scrimber, bamboo Scrimber, etc. Think of the number of people through almost 50 years who have tried to refine Scrimber.

One man who seemed to be on the verge of a product breakthrough, not with Scrimber, but with a product called Cross Laminated Strand Timber (CLST), was Graeme Black, CEO of Lignor in Australia. He died suddenly in East Melbourne on October 26, leaving behind an extended family. You may have met him when he made a presentation at PELICE in 2020.

He formed Lignor to develop and patent products and processes entailing stranding technology. Most recently it was CLST, touted as a stronger version of traditional cross-laminated timber, while using underutilized juvenile species and performing with a lower carbon footprint. In fact in a recent issue of Panel World, Graeme and Lignor announced intentions to construct a CLST plant in Maine with a $25 million investment.

Following his MBA from the London Business School, Graeme had been a director of Craigpine Timber and Simmonds Lumber, served as a consultant in numerous projects and was genuinely devoted to forest sustainability and the environmental attributes of wood products.

Upon Graeme’s death, the Lignor web site stated, “Graeme was a visionary leader. He brought to the team a vast experience in business and a pioneering spirit that inspired us all every day. He also brought the personal qualities of intellectual curiosity, kindness and resolve.”