“Hunt Lumber Company Plans Plywood Plant in Winn Area,” Winn Parish Enterprise, October 8, 1964, A1.
Hunt Lumber Company which has large sawmills two mills: one north of Danville and Zwolle in Sabine parish, this weeks reveled plans to construct a modern pine plywood manufacturing plant in the Winn Parish area that will employ 300 people.
While a definite location is unknown, Mr A.T. Hunt said that it would be in the vicinity north of Dodson. There will be 300 jobs in addition to the 250 jobs already employed in the Hunt Lumber logging division in Winn Parish. Construction of the new plant will be between $3 million and $4 million, with construction to begin within the next few months. [unreadable] The construction will be financed with private capital.
THREE IN LOUISIANA
The new industry will be one of three new plywood plants announced or already under construction in Louisiana, was cheering news from an economic standpoint in Winn Parish.
The modern machinery will be installed for the operation and the plant will have a capacity of between 80 and 90 million board feet of plywood a year. The plant, to be of the latest design will produce a sheathing grade plywood used by the building industry.
Availability of pine logs in abundant quantity was cited by Mr. Hunt as a major reason for locating the new plant in this area. He also said that the good relations between Hunt Lumber Company and the people of Winn was a factor.
Manufacture of plywood from Southern pine is a recent development in the wood industry, and the South’s huge forests and fast-growing pine have made if the logical place for the plywood plants many of which are expected to be built in the next few years.
Mr. Hunt whois a former Winn Parish resident and a graduate of Winnfield High School told the Enterprise that he is “glad to be back in Winn Parish.”
Mayor Mary W. Allen of Winnfield commenting on the Hunt decision to build in Winn, expressed the community’s appreciation and urged everyone to continue to work to create an environment that will encourage new industry to choose this locality.
It appears that the vast supply of timber growth in the last twenty years may be doing what tree farming supporters said it would – cause industrial development in Louisiana’s pine belts. Winn Parish, squarely in the center of this region, just recently was picked by the Hunt Lumber Company as a site for a new southern pine plywood mill providing 300 jobs. The announcement came just prior to the National Forest Products Week, Oct 18-24.
This was the third such mill announced for the state. One is under construction in Oakdale, another in Many. These two are significant in that they are the first to be built in the state by a West Coast manufacturer forced to find raw materials elsewhere.
This shifting of the industrial plants was predicted years ago by those who said plant pine trees and time will provide the industry. The theory of these tree planters has been shaken at times when some feared that the fast production of pine trees was providing too many for existing markets and thus the prices were being cut. Two things are happening already: existing mills are modernizing, increasing capacity, buying individually owned timber. New mills are going up.
It is hard to say just how much money comes to Winn Parish people directly from timber. At the end of the first quarter, the Louisiana Employment security office here showed 1,634 people employed directly in the timber industry… $10 million in wages