Willamette is integrated in the south.

Willamette Industries' Southern Region operates two particleboard plants and one MDF plants. The vertically integrated company gets the material for its board from its own local mills.

Caretakers of forestland that spans some 564,000 acres in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, Willamette Industries' Southern Region, is a vertically integrated division that supplies seeds for its trees, trees for its mills, and byproducts for its boards.

In addition to forests, the Southern Region, one of three Willamette regions, encompasses five plywood plants, two lumber mills, two particleboard and one MDF plant and a seed orchard. Currently in various stages of planning and construction is a laminated beam plant and an oriented strand board plant.

Grouped together into a big circle, or a large upside-down triangle if looked at on the map, the facilities are placed so that they work together to save transportation and energy costs. Seeds are harvested from a nearby seed orchard and grown to seedlings. From there, they are taken to nearby forests to grow into mature trees. Once the trees are harvested they are taken to nearby sawmills and plywood plants. The wood byproduct from these plants is trucked down the road to nearby composite board plants.

Even the wood byproduct that is not used for the panel products gets utilized as boiler fuel. Willamette's manufacturing facilities are able to generate 62 percent of its total energy needs from what otherwise would be a waste product.

Being vertically integrated is nothing new for Willamette

Willamette Industries was founded in 1906 as the Willamette Valley Lumber Co. in Dallas, Ore. The first year it produced 18 million board feet. Today it produces 478 million board feet.

Throughout the years the company made purchases of plants and timberland and modernized its equipment.

An example of this occurred in the 1950s. At the time, the company had access to low-grade logs best suited for making plywood. The company purchased a plywood plant in Griggs, Ore., and eventually built other plywood plants adjacent to the saw mills. To utilize chips produced at these plants Willamette began making linerboard (the facing material used in the making of corrugated boxes).

The only thing that was not being used was planer shavings and plywood trim. Willamette imported particleboard technology from Germany and built a plant next to a paper mill, and began making particleboard.

Plants in the Southern region

Willamette is one of the main employers in the region. For example, its particleboard plant in Simsboro, La., employs 140 people from the surrounding small towns in northeastern Louisiana.

Chips are trucked into this particleboard plant, as well as the plant in Lillie, La., on a daily basis. A mountain of the particles sits outside the facility waiting to be turned into particleboard. These particles are brought into the plant where they are broken down into finer and finer pieces in a series of large shakers. The pieces are moved to the end of a conveyor where they drop like a waterfall. Falling, heavier and lighter particles are separated by air and gravity. The finer materials will form the face and back of the board. The heavier, coarser, particles will be sandwiched between these layers. The mix is then put into a UV oven where it is baked.

In 1993, the two particleboard plants produced 204,000 million square feet of particleboard. Particleboard from the Simsboro and Lillie plants provide a large portion of the composite board used in the United States annually. In 1993, the company's five particleboard plants in Louisiana and Oregon produced 14.4 percent of the nation's demand, according to the company's annual report.

Willamette's MDF plant in Malvern, Ark., and its Atlantic-Region plant in Bennettsville, S.C., manufactured 18.9 percent of the nation's usage, the report said.

At its other plants in the Southern Region, the company produced 241,000 million square feet of MDF, 1.045 billion square feet of plywood and 138,000 million square feet of lumber.

Growing seeds

For the past 10 years, Willamette has been operating a seed orchard in Louisiana, in conjunction with Texas A&M University. Trees are planted for the sole purpose of harvesting the fallen seed cones.

While the orchard does not supply all the seedlings for the company - Willamette plants five trees for every one it cuts - last year 640 bushels of cones were collected by hand.

These cones produced between 6,500 and 7,000 seeds. These seeds will be grown into seedlings which will be used to plant upwards of 9,000 acres of forestland.

Willamette says that seeds harvested from the seed orchard should help the company recover 20 percent more fiber per acre.

In addition to growing trees in order to harvest the seeds, Willamette silviculturists study trees, trying to find ways to speed growth, ensure survival, produce fewer limbs and become disease resistant.

Utilizing the forests, while protecting the environment

In all, Willamette Industries owns or controls the cutting rights on 1.2 million acres of forests: 564,000 of which are in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas; 328,000 in Oregon; 188,000 in Tennessee; and 126,000 in the Carolinas.

They supply about 40 percent of the company's long term needs. The remainder is purchased from private and government land and through open market purchases.

Trees are planted on a 40-year life cycle, during which time they will be thinned three times. The first time is after 15 years. Thinning alleviates some of the competition for sunlight and nutrients and makes the remaining trees stronger as a result. While these are primarily pine forests, hardwood trees grow here also. These are thinned out and sent to hardwood veneer plants or to the chipper to be used for composite boards.

After the 40-year cycle, the company clear cuts the land in up to 100 acre increments, leaving behind snags for use by birds hunting prey from above. The size of the cut depends on a number of factors including the area's natural surroundings; i.e. is there a stream nearby which needs to be protected or is this a red cockaded woodpecker habitat.

After the clear cut, the company goes in and prepares the land for replanting. It first control burns the ground cover to make it easier to plant, then fertilizes the land once and finally plants. Within a year the area is teeming with life. The planted trees take hold, the ground is covered with weeds such as the Dewberry (a favorite food source of deer and other animals), and deer, turkey and rabbit tracks are plentiful.

Today, Willamette Industries is planting the third generation of trees on some of the same ground the company logged after it was founded in 1906.

Wildlife

Willamette's forests are teeming with a wide range of animal life from the black bear and deer to quail and wild turkey.

The land is also home to a number of colonies of red cockaded woodpeckers the "spotted owl" of the South. The company has set aside approximately 10,000 acres for the birds' habitat. "When we bought this area there were only three to five RCW colonies, but we did such a nice job of foresting that they have promulgated," said Luke Lewis, a Willamette wildlife biologist.

The company has also set aside 33,000 acres for the Jackson-Bienville wildlife management area.

Other areas, known as Streamside Management Zones, have also been set aside. These SMZ's provide a 50-100 foot buffer of mature trees between a harvest and the water where many animals live and drink.

"We are trying to find a balance between economics and the environment. We are trying to do something very positive for wildlife," Lewis said.