Georgia‐Pacific announced on the 20th of February that the company will build a new softwood lumber production facility in Warren County, Georgia, on property adjacent to its existing lumber mill.
Construction of the $135 million, 340,000‐square foot, technologically advanced plant is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2018 with an anticipated startup in spring 2019. Georgia‐Pacific’s existing lumber plant in Warren County will continue full operations until the new facility is completed.
“We have enough property next to our existing mill in Warren County to build a larger facility equipped with the latest in lumber manufacturing technology,” said Fritz Mason, vice president and general manager, Georgia‐Pacific Lumber. “We have a great team at Warrenton and building a new state‐of‐the‐art facility on this site will make it competitive for years to come. The team has earned it.”
The new facility will be capable of over three times the output of the current facility. The existing facility has been operating since the early 1970s and technology in the lumber production business has changed significantly since that time.
Once in production, the new facility will receive approximately 185 truckloads of pine logs a day and produce approximately 350 million board‐feet of lumber per year.
“Last year we announced a similar project in Talladega, Alabama that will begin production this summer. This new facility at Warrenton is the second of several we have in our current plan,” Mason said. “The demand for lumber continues to improve as the housing market recovers, so we continue to evaluate similar investments in several states across the country to serve our customers’ needs for lumber.”
