MISSOULA — Roseburg Forest Products closes its doors for good on Wednesday. And with that, 150 people will be out of a job.
In a press release, Roseburg Forest Products, based in Oregon, stated that the closure of their Missoula plant was part of a larger strategy to exit the particle board manufacturing business. They also stated that is was an “extremely difficult decision” to close the plant.
The plant here in Missoula employed roughly 150 employees, many of whom have worked there for years, if not decades. It made particle board as well as plywood, and some of the material that was sourced for this manufacturing came from Pyramid Mountain Lumber, a saw mill in Seeley Lake that is also set to close soon. County Commissioner, Dave Strohmaeir, talked on the situation and what may be in store.
“I think the bigger concern would just be in terms of the wood products industry in general. Once you continue to have enough attrition of facilities like Roseburg, perhaps Pyramid Mountain Lumber, it’s hard to build up that capacity again once it’s gone.”
The economic impacts of the closure are going to be immediately felt by the employees of the plant, but the larger impacts are still unclear. Strohmaeir did note that about 20 employees had already found new employment with some training to obtain their CDL licenses.
The future of the land that the plant sits on is also uncertain, but the city hopes that they will be able to redevelop it into something else at some point.
“I’m not exactly sure at this point in time what the economic ripple effects will be, but we are optimistic that the future is still bright. And we’ll be in touch with the Roseburg owners of that site as far as potential redevelopment plans, and looking for ways that Missoula county may be able to assist in that.”
The closure of Roseburg Forest Products is without a doubt a huge blow to local manufacturing and on a wider scale it’s a huge blow to the wood products industry in Western Montana.
