And here is the next part of the article.Ken wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 8:22 pmYes, but look at what the article (in the Oregonian) says about why they are closing. They simply can't compete. The industry has changed and they haven't. Same as how a small coal mine in Kentucky can't compete against the enormous mountain top removal operations in Wyoming. Nothing was ever going to make them profitable because they simply can't afford to compete for logs on the open market with the big operators. Reducing environmental regulations isn't going to change that equation.RZehr wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 6:54 pmIt also applies to the small locally owned and operated 100 year old C&D Lumber Co., that I posted about from this weekend. About 100 jobs gone. You don’t like consolidation? Don’t drive out the smaller guys. You want to clear the competition for Weyerhaeuser? Keep adding regulations, and throwing up barriers to entry.
But none of this answers my question to you about their well used strategy. Are you aware of how frequently the lawfare has been employed by environmentalists?
And consolidation? That's been a bipartisan thing. It was the Trump Administration that approved the consolidation of Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek which made things worse for C&C but that part of Douglas County voted for Trump by a 50-point margin. Shug. Neither party has done much for rural America or done anything about consolidation.
Douglas County needs to rethink it's economic base and diversify. Shutting down their libraries isn't going to help them do that. Maybe nothing will. I can remember going down to play HS football games back in the early 1980s. It was kind of a ragged and hostile place even back then.C&D blamed the pending closure in Riddle on “the unprecedented challenges facing the industry today,” including fluctuating market prices, rising operating costs and timber shortages. Johnson said some of C&D’s lumber is fetching the same price it did 20 years ago even as all other costs have soared.
“Within the last few months, we figured we would need to purchase Douglas fir logs at nearly half of the going market price in order to sell our lumber and break even. This clearly isn’t sustainable,” Johnson said.
You don’t seem to want to understand that new regulations 1. May contribute to price fluctuations, 2. If you are getting logs under more regulation, it may contribute to overhead, 3. May contribute to timber shortage.“
Reduced output from public forestland, increased consumption by larger wood products manufacturers and the effects of the 2021 Private Forest Accord are squeezing smaller mills like C&D, according to Johnson.
But what you really seem to want to ignore (but I know you in fact do understand), is how regulations fall disproportionately heavy on smaller companies. Which again, is something that is specifically mentioned in the sequential paragraph that I provided here.
Adding environmental regulations help clear out small operators and put the economic thumb heavily in favor of huge multinational corporations.
Why has lumber prices stayed the same, while timber has increased? Because we are importing lumber from deregulated countries, instead of milling it. We can’t compete. All while logging regulations drive up the cost of getting the logs from the forests.