F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. is reducing production and laying off employees due to lack of available log supply at its sawmill facility in Columbia Falls.
Beginning Sept. 29, production hours at the sawmill will be reduced from 80 hours per week to 60 hours for an indefinite period of time. Ten employees are also being laid off.
“This is just agonizing,” Stoltze General Manager Chuck Roady said. “This is hard to grasp.”
Roady said he informed the employees of the cutbacks Wednesday afternoon.
The reduction is the most significant Stoltze has experienced in years, including throughout the recent recession. It was the largest employee layoff “in a long, long time,” Roady said.
Statewide lumber production and worker wages increased in the first six months of 2014, according to a new study, but Roady and others in the logging industry have raised concerns in recent months over persistent litigation that has tied up timber sales across Northwest Montana.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy ruled in favor of environmental groups opposed to logging in the Stillwater State Forest, a 93,000-acre swatch of land near Olney with six separate sales. Stoltze had two of those sales, with an estimated 6 million board feet in each, Roady said. A third sale was owned through a contractor who planned to utilize Stoltze’s facility.
Following the court decision, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation suspended portions of its timber sale contracts for the forest indefinitely.
“We were faced with this anyway. But the (Molloy decision) was the final jab in the gut,” Roady said.
Roady said company managers decided to reduce production by 25 percent each week to save larger layoffs. The layoffs will likely be permanent, Roady said.
“It is with extreme frustration that we announce this curtailment. At a time when lumber markets are rebounding, we are faced with having to reduce production due to lack of access to the raw material,” he stated. “This is not a decision that has been made lightly, however we feel it is in the best interest of our employees and company to be proactive in response to the continue constrained log supply in our region.”
Established in 1912, Stoltze is the oldest family-owned sawmill in Montana. It employs roughly 125 people.
“For many years we have talked about he urgency in needing to address active management of our forests,” stated Paul McKenzie, resource manager at Stoltze. “Unfortunately, we have arrived at the point where hard decisions need to be made that will affect Stoltze, our employees and contractors. As a forester, it is disheartening to be surrounded by highly productive forests that could benefit from active management, yet still not have access to sufficient log supply to meet the production needs of our sawmill.”
Correction: A previous version of this story stated incorrectly that the DNRC suspended its timber sale contracts for the Stillwater State Forest following a recent court decision. The DNRC suspended portions of its sale contracts.