Libby lumber mill to close, 300 to lose jobs

The Stimson Lumber Mill in Libby will close by the end of the year, company presi dent Andrew Miller announced Monday,
shocking some 300 employees who will be jobless by January.
Miller came from company headquarters in Portland, Ore., to Libby for a special meeting of all the mill’s 320 employees Monday to
announce the mill will close in 60 days.

By Jennifer McKee of The Standard State Bureau
“ What drove the decision was severe eco nomic losses that can’t be sustained,” Miller said.
The mill, the town’s largest employer with a payroll of about $15 million, makes plywood and has a smaller specialized plant that
employs about 20 people. That plant will not be closed down, Miller said, and may be expanded in the future.

The company announced earlier it may have to close in a year and a half if it didn’t get another 25 million board feet from the
Kootenai National Forest. That announcement launched the union, the town and the Montana congressional delegation on a
mission to save the mill.

While Miller praised those efforts, he said the decision to close the Libby mill had little to do with the amount of logs coming off
the Kootenai. Rather, in the last 45 days, Miller said, the market for plywood has been thick with cheaper imports from Brazil and
Scandinavia that Libby simply can’t compete with. He faulted the process by which timber cuts are approved in the United States,
which allow for citizen appeals, for driving up the cost of logs beyond the value of manufactured timber products like plywood.
Had the mill stayed open, it would have lost several million dollars this year, Miller said.

“ We went from being marginally profitable to seeing significant losses,” he said in a tele phone interview.
The news stunned both workers and lead ers, many of whom said they felt the announcement came as a brutal surprise.
Sheri Brookshire’s husband works for the mill. They just bought a house and now she doesn’t know if they can stay in Libby.
“ I’m just sick,” she said. “ I understand that after the meeting, a couple of guys went out and put “ for sale” signs on their trucks.”

The news was also a blow to Mayor Tony Berget, who said he felt like the town was finally recovering from the scare and atten
tion of its asbestos contamination. Just last week Libby was designated a Superfund site because of the contamination.
The town is having an emergency public meeting at City Hall on Wednesday at 7 p.m., to talk about what the town can do to help
the local economy.

The announcement brought condolences from Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Gov. Judy Martz.
Both Martz and Burns faulted the Forest Service for the closure. Baucus said he was going to keep working to keep the mill from
closing for good.
Stimpson’s other mill, located in Bonner, east of Missoula, is in better financial shape and not expected to be affected by the Libby
closure, Miller said.

The union will be working out severance packages for the laid-off workers with the company in the next couple of weeks, he said

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