Georgia-Pacific building new softwood lumber facility
Georgia-Pacific announced that it will build a new softwood lumber production facility in Warren County, Ga.
Construction of the $135 million, 340,000-sq.-ft. technologically advanced plant is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2018 with an anticipated startup in spring 2019. The new facility will be located on property where an existing GP lumber mill is situated.
GP’s existing lumber plant in Warren County will continue full operations until the new facility is completed. After startup of the new plant, Georgia-Pacific estimates that it will hire an additional 30 to 40 employees, bringing its workforce in Warren County to approximately 150 people.
“We have enough property next to our existing mill in Warren County to build a larger facility equipped with the latest in lumber manufacturing technology,” said Fritz Mason, vice president and general manager of Georgia-Pacific Lumber. “We have a great team at Warrenton and building a new state-of-the-art facility on this site will make it competitive for years to come. The team has earned it.”
The new facility will be capable of over three times the output of the current facility, the company said. The existing facility has been operating since the early 1970s.
Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific employs more than 7,200 people at 18 locations in Georgia. Since 2006 the company has invested approximately $1.9 billion in additional capital and acquisitions in Georgia.
Once in production, the new facility will receive approximately 185 truckloads of pine logs a day and produce approximately 350 million board-feet of lumber per year.
“Last year we announced a similar project in Talladega, Ala., that will begin production this summer," Mason said. "This new facility at Warrenton is the second of several we have in our current plan. The demand for lumber continues to improve as the housing market recovers, so we continue to evaluate similar investments in several states across the country to serve our customers’ needs for lumber.”