Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

IP To Shut Down For One Month

Two of International Paper Company's wood products plants will be taking some time off.

According to a release from the company, Gurdon's Wood Products Plant, and the Springhill, La., Wood Products Plant will be taking consecutive one-month outages during March and April.

This down time is due to a lack of logable timber in the region. With the unseasonably wet weather experienced last summer and fall, along with the current wet conditions and above average rainfall since December, the supply of timber is low and the price has increased. This has made it prohibitive to build and maintain a sufficient log inventory or operate the plants under normal conditions, the release states.

"We believe this downtime will allow us to build log inventory and thus possibly avoid intermittent downtime, which could otherwise occur unpredictably, in future months, Ron Freer, manager of operations for Gurdon and Springhill, said. "Back to back shutdowns will allow us to continue meeting customer commitments in our various businesses."

Both plant's human resources departments will assist with the coordination of unemployment benefits to those displaced workers.