Mill closure will have ripples

There will be a ripple effect, and it will be felt. The pending closure of the Smurfit-Stone container mill in Frenchtown will leave 417 employees out of work, causing an immediate and substantial impact on the Missoula area economy.

But it won’t stop there.

Smurfit-Stone is different from many other large employers, because of its tentacled and symbiotic reach into Montana’s broader forest products industry.

The mill was THE destination for chips, roundwood pulp and hog fuel wood, whether it was coming directly from logging sites on public or private lands or if it was coming from sawmills across the state.

The mill paid for these raw materials, and while the prices may have been low, it still provided revenue to sellers who are often operating on tight margins. The loss of the Frenchtown mill will likely lead to the loss of logging and trucking contracting jobs and that in turn will cascade into job losses in businesses that support contractors with supplies and services.

The bite from the Smurfit-Stone closure will be most sharp in Missoula and Frenchtown, but it will be felt in the Flathead as well since F.H. Stoltze and Plum Creek were both selling wood chips to the Frenchtown mill. The University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research says the loss of 417 jobs translates to a loss of $45 million in wages and benefits, but the bureau ominously projects widespread impacts in the short and long terms for the region.

“The jobs at Smurfit-Stone have a  very large footprint across the local economy,” said Patrick Barkey, the bureau’s director. “We think that the total job impact from the closure could be as high as 1,500 jobs when all of the linkages are taken into account.”

Montanans need to brace themselves for another rough year, and try to come up with a united front to save our natural-resource jobs. Biomass conversion is another viable use for wood chips and other timber waste products and could provide a source of cheap renewable energy for the region.

Sens. Baucus and Tester and Rep. Rehberg are well advised that the way to create jobs in Northwest Montana is to use our natural resources, not lock them up on federal lands.