PORT ANGELES — The bosses of three of Port Angeles’ industrial employers talked about their businesses at this week’s Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting on Monday.
Like many other North Olympic Peninsula businesses, they’ve had trouble finding employees because of affordable housing and other issues.
Bill Hermann of Hermann Bros. Logging and Construction Inc. said his company is looking for drivers and maintenance staff such as welders, mechanics and machinists.
The company has been in business since 1968, and his family has lived on Blue Mountain Road since 1902, Hermann said.
The company has 25 trucks and 40 drivers that operate 24 hours a day, he said.
Roger Olson from FKC Screwpress said his company’s main industry is selling dewatering equipment for pulp and paper mills.
Established in Port Angeles in 1989, FKC Screwpress is the North American headquarters of Fukoku Kogyo, a Japanese company that sells equipment for removing water from materials, Olson said.
The company occupies seven acres at the industrial park on West 18th Street, he said.
The company has only 14 employees right now but had $5 million in gross sales last year, Olson said.
Seattle airline link
He said having an air link between Port Angeles and Seattle is critical because the company is manufacturing for overseas customers.
Employees take up to 100 roundtrip airline flights to Seattle every year because the company sells to customers in Europe, South America, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, he said.
Kenmore Air flies seven flights to Seattle’s Boeing Field on weekdays, and six from Seattle to Port Angeles.
But Olson recalled that air carriers before Kenmore used to offer nine roundtrips daily between Port Angeles and Seattle.
FKC also is expanding from serving pulp and paper mill customers such as Nippon Paper Industries USA Co. Ltd. to serving cities such as Port Angeles, he said.
The city is exploring a sewage treatment process that dewaters and pasteurizes sewage into a sterile soil additive, Olson said.
The product is being used on highway shoulders on U.S. Highway 101 near Sequim, he said.
As to the affordable housing issue, FKC recently had an engineer quit because he couldn’t find a house as nice as the one he used to own elsewhere for the same price, Olson said.
Nippon Paper
Harold Norlund from Nippon Paper Industries USA said his company also has trouble attracting engineers.
Nippon, which produces telephone book paper at its Port Angeles mill, employs 238 people with a $25 million payroll, but two engineer positions have been open for a year, he said.
As for his business, Nippon, a Japanese firm, views the North American paper market as mature, so globally the only growth area remaining is Asia, he said.
The company is ninth or 10th globally and wants to be fifth by 2015, he said.
He said consumers still prefer the printed telephone directory over the online version, although the Internet market will see slow growth over the next 10 years.
Nippon, which acquired the mill in 2003 in a merger with Daishowa, has been a very good owner with a stable work force and customers — and there is no truth behind rumors of a pending or potential sale, Norlund added.
