Stoltze restarts sawmill

F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. will restart its sawmill on Monday, seven weeks into its temporary shutdown.

Both of the Columbia Falls mill's shifts will start rolling Monday, eventually putting 60 or 70 people back to work as production gradually gears up to full speed. The planer crew will be at half-force for the first week or two.

When Chuck Roady, vice president and general manager, announced Stoltze's decision on Wednesday, he said it had nothing to do with a stronger market.

"It's more due to trying to optimize the value of our logs," Roady said. With 90 percent of the Stoltze log inventory coming from fire salvage sales, "we want to capture the value of logs before it gets any drier."

As temperatures rise above freezing, frozen and snow-covered logs start to check as everything melts and they get exposed to air.

"And it does it exponentially quicker when they've been burned," Roady explained. "We'd rather carry our inventory in the boards than in logs. I don't want to waste the value of the logs."

Logging operations were to have continued into mid-February, Roady said when announcing the temporary closure in late January.

On Wednesday he said the sawmill now has three or four months' supply of logs in the yard.

Monday's start-up will be seven weeks to the day since the first 45 or 50 workers were laid off because of stalled national lumber markets. Another 10 or so were sent home when crews in the woods and the log yard were shut down shortly afterward. They had been told to expect a six-week shutdown.

Lumber drying, planing and shipping crews continued for some time after the Feb. 2 shutdown. Powering back up should take a short time, Roady said, because a crew of about 20 or so stayed on to keep the boilers fired and the plant open at a minimal level. A few more workers will come in this week to help with the restarting process.

Logging crews still are out of the woods because of weather, and it looks like this year's late spring will extend the usual stoppage for spring break-up later into June.

Laid-off workers had the option to keep insurance benefits in force if they paid their portions of the premiums. They also were eligible for unemployment.

Roady said the total work force at Stoltze varies between 124 and 134 when crews in the woods are included.

Stoltze is the second Flathead Valley lumber operation to restart operations this month. On Monday, 130 workers returned to the Columbia Falls sawmill at Plum Creek Timber Co.

Combined, Stoltze and Plum Creek are returning around 200 workers to jobs. Those returning workers unofficially would bring Flathead County's unemployment rate to 10.9 percent (down from 11.3 percent in January).

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com