Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

History Of Gurdon IP Given To Rotary

There have been a lot of changes at Gurdon's International Paper plant since 1979, when it was first acquired.

IP bought the plant from Arkla Gas Co. in 1979, when it was strictly a producer of plywood.

But, through major expansion and capital improvement, the Gurdon plant is a beacon for IP throughout the company.

One of the things IP did was to expand the business to include lumber to go with the plywood part of the company. Since then, the plant has been running nonstop for almost 20 years.

This information was imparted to the Gurdon Rotary Club by IP controller Don Morehead, at the club's regular meeting.

Now, he said, plans are to further expand the lumber side of the business and put the company in a better position for the future.

At this time, Morehead told the club members, IP does wood preparation at the Gurdon mill, with the logs being unloaded, inspected and stored.

Once the logs have been turned into either plywood or lumber, the remaining chips are sold to IP's paper plant, with the refuse being used to help power the company's two boilers in Gurdon.

Morehead told how the company uses computer technology to determine the maximum amount of lumber each log can produce. The logs, he said, are scanned, sorted by length, width and thickness by machines.

They are then stacked and shipped to the planer mill where the lumber is finished out, dried and graded before being sent to customers.

On the plywood side, he said, the logs are literally peeled in to thin sheets of veneer by lathes.

This veneer is then clipped and stacked into sheets. From there it is taken to the dry veneer department, where the wood is dried using steam heat.

At this point the veneer is graded, and assembled into layers using glue and being pressed together. It is then cut into four-foot by eight-foot sheets and shipped to customers.

The sawdust and bark waste is used to fuel the two boilers which crank out 80,000 pounds of pressure an hour, he said.

Morehead told the Rotarians there have been periods where the plant ran short on inventory and had to basically shut down, but this doesn't happen much.

Currently, he said, IP has 600 employees in Gurdon, with this figure including those in the woods cutting, skidding and hauling the logs to the plant.

IP spends $73 million annually in raw material costs, while putting $55 million a year into the economy within a 100 mile radius.

The company has a payroll in Gurdon of $17 million a year, and pays $18 million annually to its vendors. "All of the money being spent here in this economy is because of the product," he said.

Historically, Morehead continued, the timber industry is a dangerous one. However, IP recently completed a million man hours of work without losing any time to accidents at the Gurdon plant.

The Whelen Springs sawmill, also owned by IP, can brag of no lost time for 20 years. "We're proud of our safety record," he said. "It's our top priority."

The Gurdon plant, he continued, primarily makes two by four, two by six and two by twelve lumber for construction. Most of this product is shipped to the Midwest where it is used to build homes.

At this time, he added, IP is selling a lot of veneer to laminated veneer lumber companies.

Morehead said 10 percent of the veneer at IP is not turned into plywood, but is sold to lumber companies.

Currently, IP has a total of 31 plants, with Gurdon's being one of three plywood plants within the corporation.

The company has three oriented strand board (OSB) plants, which use wood chips to make this product. OSB, Morehead said, is mostly used for decking.

Gurdon's plant produces 350,000 tons of chips a year, with much of this used for paper.

The company spent $28 million on upgrades for the plywood plant, and is now working to improve the lumber side.

Morehead said IP is gearing up to handle the smaller logs being produced by tree plantations, as this is the current trend in the growing part of the timber industry.

The logs produced at tree plantations, he said, are smaller than normal, and require a different type of machinery to handle them.