WELDON, North Carolina – Roseburg Forest Products has begun bringing its new pine lumber mill in Eastern North Carolina online. The new mill, which began operating as Roanoke Valley Lumber in February, is ramping up a second shift and will add a third in the future. It represents a capital investment of $200 million for land, construction, and equipment.

The mill is located in the small town of Weldon, which has access to the I-95 corridor and is situated in a region with abundant forest resources and other nearby woods products businesses, including two paper mills and other lumber mills.

The 175-acres site in years past had been used for a coal-fired power plant. Roseburg announced plans for the mill in the summer of 2021 and began doing site preparation work. The company demolished some remaining infrastructure and cleaned up the site. It held a groundbreaking ceremony in the spring of 2022 to mark the start of construction.

Prior to taking on the development and start-up of the new mill, plant manager Adam Reed, 34, was operations manager for the company’s mill in Roseburg, Oregon. Reed, who holds an operations management degree from Oregon Institute of Technology, has worked for Roseburg – headquartered in Springfield, Oregon – for about 10 years.

Reed was involved in the “tail end” of the company’s decision to site the Southern Yellow Pine mill in Weldon. The company’s decision process focused quickly on Weldon in 2017, and it began buying stumpage and timberland in the region, in both North Carolina and Virginia. Now it owns nearly 200,000 acres of timberland in the region, making it the largest private timberland owner in the Roanoke Valley region.

Roseburg is interested in business opportunities where it can produce wood products with vertically integrated operations, noted Reed, and already has two other manufacturing facilities in the Southeast U.S. – in South Carolina and Arkansas.

There were a “couple of factors” in the company’s decision to choose Weldon to site a mill, noted Reed. One was the opportunity to expand the Roseburg footprint in a vertically integrated manner. Another leading factor was the people of the region, said Reed, the quality of the workforce. “We had to have the best people,” said Reed. “We had the best opportunity to hire them here.”

The new mill, which began operating in February, currently is producing about 2.5 million board feet per week. At the time of the visit by TimberWest, it was ramping up a second shift that was expected to bring production to 5 million board feet. A third shift, envisioned operating in late 2025 or early 2026, would push production to 6 million board feet. The mill operates Monday-Thursday and is shut down Friday and the weekend for maintenance.

The mill employs about 140 workers – Rose likes to refer to its staff as team members. The third shift, when operating, will require about 20-30 more workers. The staff includes foresters.

Canadian-based Comact did the entire project, including design, construction of the mill buildings, and equipping the complex. Comact has been a leading original equipment manufacturer of wood processing machines as well as digital technologies, cutting solutions, project services, and aftermarket support for more than 100 years. (See related article on page 11.)

Adam was involved with other Roseburg management in selecting Comact for the project. Roseburg considered other partners for the project and also has its own internal engineering group. However, the company wanted a ‘turn key’ solution, said Reed. Comact offered the solution “and had done it elsewhere,” he said. “For us, it made the decision pretty easy.” Comact and its subsidiaries supplied all the equipment, from log infeed to finished product, including scanners and optimization.

The start-up process has “gone very well,” said Reed. “We’ve been very happy with the way it’s gone.”

The biggest challenge with the start-up process had nothing to do with machine centers or equipment, noted Reed. It’s been the soft lumber market. “We’re constantly working through procurement of raw materials to processing wood and pushing into a market that’s not taking a lot right now,” he said. “I give a lot of credit to our sales team,” he added, to find markets for the company’s lumber.

The covid pandemic also impacted operations of suppliers and delayed the scheduled delivery of some key components, such as high voltage electrical equipment and the overhead crane for the log yard.

The mill is processing 100 percent loblolly pine, which is abundant in natural stands as well as plantation forests in the region. The mill takes tree-length wood up to 20 inches in diameter and down to 6 inches at the top. Logging contractors are used to harvest trees on company-owed stumpage or timberland. At full production, about 20-30 percent of raw material is expected to be generated from Roseburg holdings and the remainder from ‘gate logs’ purchased from other logging contractors. Roseburg foresters manage the company’s timberlands.

All the company’s production is kiln-dried in three Deltech continuous lumber kilns supplied by Comact. Each kiln can dry about 100 million board feet of lumber annually. All production is sold S4S, surfaced in its planer mill operations.

The mill’s production is sold to lumber treating businesses, home centers, and secondary manufacturing markets. In the long term, Reed believes the leading market will be treating companies and professional building materials dealers.

The mill manufactures all dimension lumber, 2-inch boards in increments ranging from 8-20 feet and 4 inches to 12 inches wide. It can also cut studs, 1-inch lumber and 4×4 timbers. The leading products, depending on market conditions, are 2×4 and 2×12.

The mill’s operations are highly automated, noted Reed. In fact, only three employees are needed to oversee the automated controls, from log infeed to the trimmer and sorter, although a small group of employees is stationed at key points to monitor processes and help clean up debris. It took time to train workers on the automated systems. “It’s a big learning curve to overcome,” said Reed.

In the yard logs are unloaded from trucks with either the Konecranes 32-ton radial crane or a Cat 988 large wheel loader and put in inventory. Either can be used to load logs onto the infeed deck that feeds them to a Comact single ring debarker. After debarking the logs go to a Comact four-saw merchandising system equipped with 72-inch circular saws. The merchandised logs are kicked off and segregated onto one of two decks, depending on diameter.

Primary breakdown is done by the Comact Optimized Length Infeed system. The sharp chain infeed secures the log for scanning, and the system adjusts the log for skew and slew as well as positioning the cutting tools. Chipping heads open two sides of the log, and circular quad saws remove jacket boards from the two sides. The two-sided cant feeds directly into a canter-chipper that opens the top and bottom faces to finish the profile of the cant before it enters a gang saw.

The boards are optimized by the Comact TrimExpert and trimmed, then collected in a 75-bin sorting system. Boards are conveyed to a MoCo stacker that stacks them automatically in layers with sticks for kiln-drying.

The planer operations are on the ground floor of the mill, under the other mill equipment. A tilt-hoist removes the sticks and the lumber is surfaced on four sides by a Miller planer.

Logs are scanned and optimized by Comact technology prior to primary breakdown and material is subsequently scanned and optimized at each major machine center. All log, lumber, and residual conveying and material handling equipment also was supplied by Comact. Lumber strapping equipment was supplied by Signode.

It is the first time that Roseburg has turned to Comact for such a turn-key project, although it has Comact equipment at its mill in Dillard, Oregon.

The mill produces four types of residuals – bark, green chips, sawdust, and dry shavings. There are markets for all of them – nearby paper mills and pellet mills, landscape businesses and contractors, and farmers, among others.

The mill has three open sheds, including two for storing rough dry lumber. Finished lumber is stored under 100,000 square feet of roof. The property has rail service for shipping.

Roseburg has 13 manufacturing facilities in North America, including the country’s second largest short lumber stud mill in Dillard, Oregon. The South Carolina mill, which manufactures engineered wood products, opened in 2020. The Arkansas plant, which manufactures medium density fiberboard, was acquired in 2018.

Founded in 1936, Roseburg Forest Products is a privately-owned company and one of North America’s leading producers of particleboard, medium density fiberboard and thermally fused laminates. Roseburg is also a major manufacturer of softwood and hardwood plywood, lumber, LVL and I-joists. The company owns and sustainably manages more than 600,000 acres of timberland in Oregon, North Carolina and Virginia, as well as an export wood chip terminal facility in Coos Bay, Oregon. Roseburg products are shipped throughout North America and the Pacific Rim.

“Something that is very important to our organization is our team members,” said Reed. The mill location was selected in large part because of the community and its people, he said. “When you look at our team, I’m very proud of them.” People were hired based on “fit,” and not just work experience. Roseburg looks for three attributes in candidates, he added: “Are they hungry, humble, and smart – do they work well with other people.”

“Our team members show up to work every day and do their jobs in a professional environment and do so in a professional manner. We’re team members working toward a common goal.”

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