FORKS — Allen Logging Co., the last production lumber mill on the North Olympic Peninsula’s West End, expects to cease operating by mid-July.
The closure will idle 45 workers, including drivers, millwrights, mechanics and log yard laborers, said Gerry Lane, president.
The mill at 176462 U.S. Highway 101 on the Hoh River in Jefferson County is the last production softwood mill west of Port Angeles.
Lane said foreign competition for domestic private timber, regulations on harvesting trees from state and federal lands, a chancy supply of such wood and the low prices of foreign logs — made more attractive by a strong U.S. dollar — combined to cause the closure.
Asian markets pay more than U.S. mills can afford for the privately grown logs that can be exported legally from the U.S.
This comes while consumption in the United States is climbing — but most of it from cheap wood imports, Lane said, especially from Canada.
Meanwhile, governmental environmental regulations hike the cost of harvesting timber from state and federal forests, Lane said, and even that supply is unpredictable in the face of environmentalists’ opposition to logging.
The state Department of Natural Resources arrearage — the timber it is authorized to cut but never has harvested — stands at 60 million board feet a year, according to Rod Fleck, Forks city attorney and city planner.
One year’s arrearage, Fleck said, could have supplied Allen Logging Co. for several years.
At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service forecasts harvests from Olympic National Forest that are flat or in decline, Fleck said.
“I think some folks need to start asking some pretty tough questions at the state and federal level,” he said.
Moreover, environmental interests make it “darned tough” to continue milling timber, Lane said, citing the continued efforts to pass the Wild Olympic and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which was reintroduced for a third time Thursday by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Derek Kilmer.
“The emphasis is not on conducting business on commercial tree farms,” Lane said.
“We seem to be very satisfied to import lumber from Canada.”
Lloyd Allen came to the area in 1937 and built a veneer mill on the Hoh in the 1950s, Lane said, and added a sawmill in 1968. Drying kilns joined it in 1976; a chipping saw in 1990.
In 2014, Allen Logging produced 15 million board feet — 35 million in its heyday 15 years ago — of 8-foot-long 2-by-4s, 4-by-4s and 2-by-6s, plus railroad ties and wood chips, Lane said.
It sold its lumber locally to Forks True Value, where the closure’s impacts will “mean bigger transport costs,” said Bob Stark, owner.
“I always tried to buy from the local mills,” Stark said.
“Now there are none.”
Allen Logging also marketed its lumber through a Tacoma wood trader throughout the Northwest to locations that included Home Depot in Sequim, Lane said.
Lane said he could not estimate Allen Logging’s payroll, but Fleck pegged it between $3 million and $4 million, plus what the company spent on merchandise and services in Forks.
The mill stopped receiving logs Monday. Lane said he expected it to exhaust its inventory — mostly hemlock — in about three weeks.
After it cuts and dries its last lumber in mid-July, he said, the mill will close.
That will bring to more than 160 the number of family-wage-plus-benefits jobs that have been lost in the local forest products industry in the past year, Fleck said.
Three mills closed in 2014. They are:
■ Green Creek Wood Products, Port Angeles, October, 35 jobs.
■ Interfor sawmill, Beaver, July, 52 jobs.
■ Interfor planer mill, Forks, July, 35 jobs.
A single Interfor mill remains in business on the west side of Port Angeles. The nearby Port Angeles Hardwood mill processes alder.
Elsewhere, Simpson Lumber Co. closed two Shelton-area mills in Mason County last spring, idling 270 workers.
Interfor Corp. purchased Simpson sawmills in Longview and at the Port of Tacoma less than five months after closing its mills in Beaver and Forks, the company announced in December.
It also purchased mills in Meldrim, Ga., and Georgetown, S.C.
Simpson mills in Shelton were not part of the deal.
Lane said the Port Angeles-based Allen family notified him Friday of the closure. Lloyd Allen died in July 2012, but Lane said the company’s future was inevitable.
“The family put in three years of commitment to the mill and the crew and the community, and we commend them for that,” he said.
“The primary reason [for the shutdown] is our inability to source the mill on a predictable basis with logs that allow us to operate with a profit.”
Lane said he didn’t know where Allen Logging Co. workers could find new jobs, given other area mill closures.
“That’s the roughest part of the whole deal,” he said Tuesday, adding that workers will be hard-pressed to find similar jobs without relocating — even if such work was available.
“I really can’t answer that one. I don’t know.”
The loss of the mill would hurt Forks’ economy, according to True Value’s Stark.
“Out here in Forks,” he said, “nothing ever gets easier.”
Managing the mill brought great satisfaction, Lane said.
“They’ve been a great crew,” he said about Allen Logging employees.
“If you don’t have a good crew, all you’ve got is a bunch of scrap iron and a pile of logs.
“It’s a great business to be in. It’s fun; it’s exciting.
“You’re close to nature. You’re working with your hands and your heart.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
