Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World May 2022

At the risk of repeating myself (what the heck, I’ll be 67 in September), I remember at the beginning of the 2020 Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo (PELICE) in Atlanta, as I spoke to the gathering on the first morning, when I referred to one of the scenes in the movie, “Saving Private Ryan.” It was the scene when Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore) and the remainder of their small team of Army Rangers found Private Ryan (Matt Damon) and his 101st Airborne unit defending the bridge in a French village only a few days following the invasion of Normandy. Miller had been given the mission “straight from the top” to comb the French landscape, find Ryan, pull him out of combat and deliver Ryan to safety behind the lines so Ryan could go home to America. The reason for the mission was that Ryan’s three brothers had all been recently killed in action, and the U.S. military brass felt three brothers was enough.

But Ryan courageously refused to leave his outfit at the bridge and depart with the Rangers, who had lost two men while trying to find Ryan. This prompted Captain Miller to shake his head and comment to Sergeant Horvath, “Sergeant, we have crossed some strange boundary here. The world has taken a turn for the surreal.”

It was the word “surreal” that I wanted to emphasize, because literally in the middle of that 2020 conference in mid- March the pandemic crashed the party. Those of us in attendance didn’t really know what to do, except for those from Europe and Canada who began making a beeline for the Atlanta airport in order to beat their border closings. It was all very surreal, which means something like there is no way this is happening even though it is happening.

Move forward to the 2022 PELICE, held recently in late March in the same Atlanta locale in the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, specifically the Grand Ballroom North. Here I was again giving the opening remarks to a room full of people, many of whom hadn’t “gotten out” since the 2020 PELICE.

Given all that had gone in the two years between each PELICE—the illnesses, the deaths, the masks, the virtual communications, the vaccinations—as I spoke I could hear another voice inside my head whispering, “This is still very surreal.” All of these people sitting out there surely can’t be sitting out there. The pandemic can’t be over, or close enough to being over to the point we’re all gathered here, in-person, smiling, talking, even hugging one another after having not seen each other in-person since the last PELICE.

But here we were indeed. Maybe by the time you read this, the pandemic will have picked up momentum again and we will have retreated again to the confines of somewhere. But no matter what happens, the joyous occasion of PELICE 2022 is in the books. It was, after all, very real.

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World March 2022

While reading a draft of this issue’s cover story on Roseburg’s new LVL plant in Chester, SC, representing Roseburg’s first ever greenfield project in the South, I glanced at the letter that I’ve always kept on the bulletin board up and behind my iMac monitor. The bulletin board is mostly tacked with editorial planning and editorial style information, but this letter always appealed to me and I put it up there instead of filing it away into neverland.

I’m the second person who felt the letter was worth keeping. The first person was the late Fred Fields, who worked for and eventually bought the panel machinery manufacturing company, Coe Manufacturing. I worked with Fields on writing and publishing his book, “My Times With Coe,” which came out in 2010. Fields, living in Portland, Ore., opened his massive files to me, and one thing I uncovered was a letter—written to Fields on December 4, 1964 by Kenneth Ford, the owner and president of Oregon-based Roseburg Lumber Co., as the company was called then. Ford signed it as Kenneth W. Ford.

When Fields first traveled to the Northwest in 1952 for Coe one of his first projects was helping with the installation of a Coe lathe and dryer that Ford and Roseburg had purchased for Roseburg’s first plywood plant to be built in Dillard, Ore. That’s when Ford and Fields met for the first time and they struck up a tight, albeit sometimes sparring, business and personal relationship that lasted until Ford’s death in 1997.

By 1964, Fields was living in Portland and working out of Coe’s new plant in Tigard, Ore. The letter reveals that Ford was thinking seriously about building a plywood plant in the Southern U.S., and that he understood that Fields had said the profitability for Roseburg from such an endeavor “looked good.” However, Ford added, his accountant had worked up some numbers for a possible plant in the South.

Ford wrote, “The report which they prepared is not what you would call lucrative. I am enclosing a copy of this report and wish you would please go over same and if you find that it is grossly in error…see if we can get the report corrected.”

Apparently it was never “corrected” enough and Ford already had lots of other projects on his plate as Roseburg continued to build plants in the Northwest, including a massive plywood plant at Riddle, Ore. that came on in the early 1970s.

Fields, who died in late 2011, the year after the book came out, obviously felt the letter from his friend was a keepsake, and upon completing our collaboration on the book generously invited me to possess it along with some of his other materials. Being a sports enthusiast, I’m all about sports memorabilia, and while it’s not sports I’ve always viewed this letter in a similar special light, involving two legends of the trade.

At the upcoming PELICE in Atlanta, there will be discussion about Roseburg’s new LVL plant in South Carolina, and the company’s growing interests far away from its Oregon home base. I’ll be wondering, what if Kenneth Ford and Roseburg had built that plywood mill, or two or three or a half dozen of them in the South?

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World January 2022

The staff at Panel World magazine is in full in-person-conference mode in preparation for the eighth Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo (PELICE) to be held March 31 to April 1, 2022 at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta. On page six of this issue you’ll see a listing of the exhibitor sponsors who had signed on as of early December.

Some of the keynote speakers we’ve lined up include: Roseburg’s Jake Elston, Swiss Krono’s Wedig Graf Grote, American Wood Council’s Jackson Morrill, Coastland Wood Industries’ Doug Pauze, RoyOMartin’s Scott Poole, AFRY’s Philipp Sauter and Kennesaw State economist Roger Tutterow. We’re in negotiation with several others as well and will be announcing those soon.

In addition, PELICE will feature numerous technical sessions on Air Emissions Control, Resins & Waxes, Project Implementation, Quality Control, Fire Prevention, Digital Integration, and Veneer & Plywood Technologies. We continue to line up speakers for these topics, such as Rob Freres of Freres Lumber, Tom Evans of Coastal Forest Resources, Rodney Schwartz of Dürr Systems, Steve Banick of Hexion, Dane Floyd of Veneer Services, Richard Lepine of Argos Solutions, Ed Pridgen of Flamex, Michael Spurgin of Limab, Bijan Shams of Cogent Industrial Technologies, Rodney Pennington of Nestec and many others.

The full timeline agenda will be released in mid-January on the website: www.pelice-expo.com, as well as through e-mail blasts and in the Panel World newsletter. The March issue of Panel World will encompass a special PELICE 2022 preview.

Attendee registration is open at www.pelice-expo.com.

Needless to say, we’re pumped up for the PELICE coming out party!

Article by Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief, Panel World November 2021

Given that Panel World is published six times per year, the November issue before your eyes represents the final issue of 2021. I’ve read through the six issues and pulled a few highlights of what went on in the panel world in 2021 as reported by Panel World. Actually, given that as I write this it’s only October 5, let’s call it a fiscal year dating back to October 2020.

—West Fraser purchased Norbord and its 15 OSB mills, one MDF plant and two particleboard facilities for $3.1 billion.

—Alex Hunt, Jr., who formed Hunt Plywood and Hunt Forest Products in Ruston, La., and before that oversaw Willamette’s operations in the South, died November 17, 2020 at age 90.

—After an impressive rise through most of pandemic-ridden 2020, structural panel prices shot through the roof.

—Great Plains MDF announced it selected a site in Kneehill County, Alberta for building a wheat-straw based MDF plant.

—Ben Crim retired as VP of Engineering & Environmental Management at Hood Industries.

—Longtime Valon Kone representative and former part owner of Valon Kone U.S., Jerry Gordon, died at age 82.

—RoyOMartin celebrated 25 years of operation at its softwood plywood mill in Chopin, La.

—APA—The Engineered Wood Assn. named Mark Tibbetts as president, succeeding retiring Ed Elias.

—Many forest products companies reported record sales and profit in the second quarter.

—Go Lab, Inc. relocated a wood fiber insulation board plant from Germany to Madison, Maine.

—Huber Engineered Woods announced plans to build an OSB facility in Cohasset, Minn.

—Ligna cancelled its September show, which had been rescheduled from May, and said it would wait to do the next one in May 2023.

—Ashlee Cribb moved from her VP roles at Roseburg Forest Products and became Vice President, Wood Products, at PotlatchDeltic Corp.

—Mercer International, based in Vancouver, BC, purchased the bankrupt Katerra CLT business for $50 million through a bidding process.

—Charlie Hamilton, who helped to build and run Fulton, Ala.-based Scotch Plywood’s three veneer/plywood mills, died on July 18 at age 83.

—RoyOMartin announced it would build an OSB plant adjacent its current one at Corrigan, Texas.

—CalPlant I, which produced its first rice straw-based MDF at its new mill in Willows, Calif. late last year, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy with intentions to sell the company.

—Godfrey Forest Products and its proposed OSB plant in Winslow, Ariz. was one of the bidders for a large national forest timberlands stewardship contract in Arizona, but the Forest Service cancelled the process before awarding the bid.

—Panel World’s cover stories during 2021 were Coastal Plywood at Havana, Fla.; Katerra CLT in Spokane, Wash.; Egger’s new particleboard and lamination facility in Lexington, NC; Swiss Krono’s new particleboard and lamination facility in Barnwell, SC; Timber Products Co.’s veneer operation at Yreka, Calif.; and Hardel Mutual Plywood’s operation at Chehalis, Wash.