A federal judge has ruled against Freres Lumber Co. and subsidiary Freres Timber of Lyons, Ore., dismissing the company’s lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service (FS) over its response to the Beachie Creek Fire in 2020. Over Labor Day weekend, the fire started on federal land and spread to private timberlands and towns along the North Santiam River east of Salem and caused five deaths and massive damage to timberlands and property.

       The lawsuit, which sought $33 million in damages, alleged the Forest Service was negligent in battling the Beachie Creek Fire in the Willamette National Forest. The complaint said officials did not put their full aerial firefighting arsenal or other resources to work in the first 14 days of the fire before it spread and became part of a complex of fires in the Santiam Canyon fueled by high winds and downed power lines.

       The Beachie Creek Fire eventually covered 193,000 acres, mostly in the Willamette National Forest, and destroyed dozens of homes in the towns of Detroit, Gates and Mill City. Rob Freres, President of Freres Engineered Wood (the company changed names in early 2024) and Freres Timber, said the ruling would be appealed and cited the FS’ “misconduct, negligence and failure to act” in responding to the fire and said they had brought the suit to change FS approach to wildfire fighting.

       Freres said the company had lost 7,000 acres of timberland in the fire, worth $30 million, and another $3 million in timber sales that were destroyed.

After a remarkable 50-year career, Allan McClure has stepped down from his role as General Manager of Altec Manufacturing, effective December 31, 2024.

“Those familiar with the veneer and plywood industry know that Allan is among the best when it comes to maintaining and installing veneer lathes. Few possess his depth of knowledge and many veneer facilities have sought his advice on optimizing operations and improving efficiency,” according to a statement from Altec. “While he takes a well-deserved break to spend time with his family, fish and travel, don’t be surprised if you still see him on site, sharing his expertise.”

McClure will continue to play a key role in the company, transitioning to mentorship and consulting where he will focus on guiding the team and contributing to product development. He will remain a valuable resource, offering support in troubleshooting, sales, and customer relations.

McClure’s career started in the mills on the green end, followed by lathe service management at Calvert Engineering, and then co-partnering in the rotary veneer lathe specialist company, Feltham-McClure, before joining Altec in 2019.

• Altec also announced David Helm as the new General Manager and assumes responsibility for day-to-day operations of the manufacturing facility in Diboll, Texas. Helm has more than 20 years of experience in the plywood industry with a background as a layup line and green end superintendent at facilities in Alabama and Texas.

“Having worked alongside Allan for more than a year in preparation for this transition, we are confident that David will be integral to the continued growth of Altec for many years to come and are thrilled to have him on our management team,” the company states.

Chile-based Celulosa Arauco y Constitución S.A. (Arauco) has selected Dieffenbacher to supply an OSB plant to replace an existing MDF line at its Trupan site in Cholguán in the Bío-Bío region of Chile. The plant is scheduled to start production in the second half of 2026.

“We operate eight production lines from Dieffenbacher, and they’re all running great,” says Tito Jara, Composite Panels Corporate Industrial Director at Arauco. “That’s why we chose Dieffenbacher for this brownfield project to convert our Trupan I MDF line into a state-of-the-art OSB line.”

The new plant will be built around an existing 10-opening press. The Dieffenbacher scope of supply will range from the wood yard with debarking to raw board handling including pneumatic systems and plant electrics and automation. Arauco has included a MAIER rotor debarker, an OSB disc screen and a belt dryer in the order.

The interaction of rotation, friction and surface moistening of the logs makes the fully automatic MAIER rotor debarker highly efficient. The logs are laterally fed into the trough, set into rotation by long rotors with debarking tools and moved to the discharge area by the tilt of the rotors. The OSB disc screen separates the strands into two or four fractions. In a first step, equalizing rollers spread the infeed strand-flow, pre-screen it and loosen it up. Two-disc roller decks then separate the strands according to their length.

Featuring low thermal energy consumption, Dieffenbacher’s belt dryer saves costs and supports sustainability because it works at lower temperatures than drum dryers and can use low-calorific energy from the waste heat of other plant components that would otherwise remain unused. In addition to its high capacity and variability, the belt dryer features easy and product-friendly material transport. Its self-supporting construction requires only a small footprint, and its modular design makes it adaptable to different capacity requirements and is easily expandable.

Weyerhaeuser Co. has announced plans to invest approximately $500 million to build a new, state-of-the-art TimberStrand facility near Monticello and Warren, Ark., expanding the company’s engineered wood products (EWP) capacity in the U.S. South. The facility will have an annual production capacity of approximately 10 million cubic feet, which is comparable to the company’s existing TimberStrand facility in Kenora, Ontario. Construction is expected to begin in 2025, with the goal of starting operations in 2027.

Leveraging its proprietary TimberStrand technology, Weyerhaeuser is combining institutional expertise from Kenora with extensive research and development to manufacture TimberStrand with southern yellow pine as the primary feedstock. Given the company’s sizeable timber holdings in Arkansas, the Monticello facility is strategically located to source most of its fiber log requirements from company-owned timberlands in the region. Additionally, the plant will include a biomass-fueled cogeneration system, which will fully supply the plant’s electrical needs and significantly reduce its environmental footprint.

This announcement represents an expansion of Weyerhaeuser’s total investment and impact in Arkansas, adding a third manufacturing facility to go along with a lumber mill in Dierks and a plywood and veneer plant in Emerson, as well as 1.2 million acres of timberlands, a seedling nursery and several offices—currently employing more than 700 people across the state, with 200 more jobs to be added as the new EWP facility comes on-line. 

“This is an exciting opportunity to grow our EWP business, expand TimberStrand into the U.S. South and provide an additional outlet for our fiber logs in Arkansas,” says Devin W. Stockfish, President & CEO, Weyerhaeuser. “Of the wood products we produce, EWP has the strongest tie to single-family housing construction activity, and this new facility aligns with our conviction that U.S. housing demand will remain favorable over the long term. In addition, this plant will allow Weyerhaeuser to better serve other customers and end markets in the region, including mass timber applications, and it supports our broader sustainability ambitions. I’d like to thank the state of Arkansas and local officials for working with Weyerhaeuser to site this facility. We look forward to building on our long history in the state and providing new employment opportunities in Monticello and surrounding communities.”

The company expects to incur approximately $500 million of capital expenditures for the facility through 2027 and plans to exclude this investment for purposes of calculating the company’s annual adjusted funds available for distribution, as used in its flexible cash return framework. This capital outlay may be sourced from cash on hand or through future financing, as the company deems appropriate.

Georgia-Pacific has changed its operations leadership. Jeff Koeppel, senior vice president of operations, will retire in the first quarter of 2025. A role he has held since 2016, Koeppel’s been a critical part of the transformation of Georgia-Pacific’s manufacturing operations.

Hudson Pope, currently senior vice president for manufacturing at Georgia-Pacific, will assume the senior vice president of operations position with responsibility for all manufacturing segments.

Pope brings nearly 30 years of experience in the pulp and paper industry—beginning his career with Georgia-Pacific as a co-op process engineer for the company’s Crossett, Ark. facility. He has grown his career with Georgia-Pacific and several other organizations, assuming consecutive leadership roles in manufacturing, logistics, and operations. In December 2018, Pope was promoted to Georgia-Pacific’s senior vice president, building products operations. In 2023, his role changed to assume responsibility for the company’s packaging and cellulose operations.

Pope holds a B.S. in chemical engineering, with a minor in pulp and paper technology from Auburn University. An active alum, he serves on the board of directors of the Auburn Pulp & Paper Foundation as the executive committee president.

Koeppel will support Pope in making a smooth transition in the coming months.

German machine and plant manufacturer Dieffenbacher has acquired the Italian family-owned company Pagnoni Impianti S.r.l., headquartered in Aicurzio, about 30 km northeast of Milan. The company will operate under the new name Pagnoni Dieffenbacher S.r.l. The acquisition includes the assets and expertise of the plant manufacturer and four-person team led by Managing Director Michele Pagnoni, the sixth generation of his family to run the long-established company.

Pagnoni Impianti was founded in 1848 by brothers Stefano and Martino Pagnoni as a manufacturer of oil presses and pasta-shaping machines and systems. After World War I, Nicola Pagnoni, grandson of one of the company’s founders, began producing hot-plate presses, particularly for plywood production. Since then, Pagnoni has specialized in producing single- and multi-opening presses and press lines for the production of particleboard, plywood, MDF and hardboard, as well as HPL decorative laminates and short-cycle lines for melamine and phenolic paper coating. 

“Pagnoni fits in perfectly with our values at Dieffenbacher. The company is highly regarded in the industry for its partnership-based approach to doing business and its technically sound and well-engineered machines and systems,” says Dieffenbacher CFO Lukas Langer. 

With the acquisition of the company, Dieffenbacher will focus on existing Pagnoni customers as a first step. “The personal support provided by the familiar Pagnoni contacts will continue. The Pagnoni team will also be supported by our entire global Dieffenbacher service network,” explains Ralf Schmidt, Head of Global Lifetime Service Wood & Recycling at Dieffenbacher.

Dieffenbacher will use its after-sales expertise to maintain and strengthen the support of existing business relationships for service, spare parts supply and modernizations. Since the customer base of Pagnoni and Dieffenbacher largely overlaps, this will produce considerable synergy potential on both sides. 

In the medium to long term, Dieffenbacher will add Pagnoni products to its portfolio. “In particular, the short-cycle, HPL and plywood plants will be a useful addition to our range of services. We will also incorporate know-how in single and multi-opening plants for producing wood-based panels into our product range,” says Stefan Zipf, Head of the Wood Business Unit at Dieffenbacher.