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Standing tall by thinking small-Plummer capitalizes on market often avoided by other lumber mills

There’s
a downright puny quality to
the logs at Plummer Forest
Products.

Lodgepole pines, fir and
hemlock taper to a slender
4 inches in diameter.
Twelve-hundred stack
neatly into a railcar,
resembling toothpicks packed into a tiny cardboard
box.

Becky Kramer
Spokesman-Review Staff writer

"We’re probably the only sawmill around that doesn’t
like big logs," said company president Todd
Brinkmeyer.

Brinkmeyer opened Plummer Forest Products last
year, gambling that the $5 million mill would succeed
in an industry beset by downturns and sagging
lumber prices. The mill’s fiber source is
small-diameter timber that might otherwise end up on
the slash pile. Its product: standard two-by-fours and
one-by-threes.

"It’s a real asset to the area," said Dave O’Brien,
spokesman for the Idaho Panhandle National
Forests.

Science calls for thinning of trees to re-create the
open stands of big timber that once existed in parts
of North Idaho, he said. Thinning is also part of the
Forest Service’s fire management plan.

Plummer Forest Products "takes that material,"
O’Brien said, "and turns it into something that’s good
for societal needs."

So far, the mill is a break-even venture, but
Brinkmeyer is optimistic enough to start advertising
for 15 more workers. He anticipates adding a second
shift by mid-June.

Brinkmeyer built Plummer Forest Products on the site
of an old Rayonier mill razed by fire in 1998. It’s one
of three in the region specializing in small-diameter
timber.

Speed and automation are the keys to Plummer
Forest Product’s operation. Ten thousand logs — 20
per minute — shoot through the sawmill during an
eight-hour shift. The pace is essential for profitability,
said resource manager Alan Harper. That’s because
each skinny tree makes only one to three boards.

The mill will produce 50 million board feet of lumber
this year, enough to build roughly 5,000 homes.

"No one ever thinks that a tree that size has anything
of value in it," said Harper, holding up the 4-inch
trunk of a lodgepole pine. "It’s making something out
of nothing."

Plummer Forest Products would have added a
second shift earlier, Brinkmeyer said, but it took
months to develop a steady flow of logs to the mill.
Supply was sometimes scant in the beginning.

"I remember going home on a Friday night thinking,
`If we don’t get a bunch of deliveries on Monday, we’ll
run out of logs,"’ Harper said. "It takes time to
develop those markets, and change the mind-set of
people in the woods."

A depressed chip market has helped the mill attract
small logs that would otherwise be sent to pulp and
paper mills. Timber companies, squeezed by poor
markets, are looking for the best value for their wood.
Stimson Lumber Co. and the Potlatch Corp. sell logs
to the mill that are too small for their own operations.

"We can use a tree down to a 51/2-inch top, so in a
way we compete with them," said Reid Ahlf, Stimson’s
procurement manager in Coeur d’Alene. However,
Plummer Forest Products is a good outlet for the
smaller material, said Ahlf, who also ships small logs
to Vaagen Bros. Lumber in Colville, or Ponderay
Valley Fibre in Usk, Wash.

Bob Danielson operates a logging company in St.
Maries, Idaho. Many of his clients are grappling with
dense thickets of trees that grew up after earlier
logging operations, or fires. It’s not unusual for him to
find 60-year-old trees with six-inch trunks.

"It’s just like weeding out your garden," Danielson
said. "You take out the stunted ones … and let some
moisture and sunlight in."

That produces a healthier forest, with more vigorous
growth. But without a nearby mill to buy
small-diameter logs, thinning can be cost-prohibitive
for landowners, Danielson said.

O’Brien, the forest spokesman, expects thinning to
make up a larger proportion of the Idaho Panhandle
National Forest’s future sales. Currently, logs less
than 51/2 inches in diameter account for less than 5
percent of the timber volume coming off the forest.

"We know that state and federal lands have a lot of
these stands," Brinkmeyer said.

They make good 2-by-4s, he said.

•Becky Kramer can be reached at (208) 765-7122 or
by e-mail at [email protected]

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=052102&ID=s1151483&cat=section.business

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