By Jon McLaughlin
Special to the Houlton Pioneer Times
HOULTON — At its monthly meeting on Feb. 5, SADC board members welcomed Bruce Avery as the guest speaker. Avery is the plant manager for New Limerick’s Louisiana- Pacific Corporation’s facility.
Avery came to the region about 13 months ago from Mount Vernon, Washington, where he was plant manager in a competitor’s mill that manufactured engineered wood products (EWP), such as wood I-beam floor joists.
Throughout the past year, the LP plant in New Limerick has had some renovations made so that it can more easily convert between manufacturing its new product line, oriented strand lumber (OSL), to oriented strand board (OSB), which the plant was originally designed to manufacture and has done so since the early 1980’s.
This ability to switch products as needed, has enabled the plant to be more flexible and move more quickly with market demands. Although the facility is able to manufacture both products, its main goal, as the result of a $140 million expansion a few years ago, is to manufacture the specialty product, OSL.
As a result of this flexibility now afforded the New Limerick plant, and due to the strengthening of the housing market, employment at the facility has increased from 65 at the end of 2012 to an anticipated 127 by March of this year. In addition, it is estimated that employment will increase in the next 12 to 18 months due to a slow, steady, sustainable housing growth.
This bodes well for this long time County institution that has struggled the past few years, as has anyone in the housing industry.
