Timberlab Reveals Plans for Philomath, OR, Sawmill Recently Purchased From Interfor

The Philomath, Oregon, sawmill and planing mill formerly owned by Interfor that closed earlier this year will survive to see another day following its acquisition by Timberlab, Philomath News reported (8-26-24). Timberlab purchased the Interfor properties and equipment in June for $15 million.

Timberlab President Chris Evans said the facility will support a new nearby CLT facility. Timberlab anticipates making an announcement early next week on the exact location of the new CLT plant.

“I think today I can say it’s fairly close by—within a 25-mile radius of Philomath,” Evans told Philomath News. “I think that’s one of the things that was attractive about the Philomath site—the Interfor sawmill and planer mill—is that really to do a CLT facility well, you have to presort your lumber and have your lumber ready to go, energy dry it to the right condition to be laminated and then be sorted.”

As for timing of starting up the mills, the planer facility will go online first with the sawmill coming in later.

“We have no immediate plans to start the sawmill back up today. … We really want to probably bring that online, the sawmill portion, when the CLT (facility) is up and running,” Evans said. “But in the near term, the planer mill and the dry kiln are definitely something that we are currently making plans for startup.”

Asked by Philomath News to define “near term,” Evans said the company is making plans on improvements with the planer mill to go online “in the next six months is probably what we’re looking at.”

The CLT facility and the Philomath sawmill part of the operation will be further out. “They will be breaking ground this fall on the CLT facility … that is like a two-year project to bring that facility online,” Evans said.

“So, the big reason that the Philomath mills were desirable was that we felt they had all the necessary equipment and everything to make good, quality laminating materials for both glulam and CLT and pairs well with the rest of our business,” Evans said.

Earlier this year, Timberlab acquired American Laminators, a glulam timber manufacturer with Oregon operations in Drain and Swisshome.