Glenwood Herald

It’s Official! Bean announces May 5 reopening for sawmill May 2, 2008 - No reporter cited

By Michael G. Fox
Editor

GLENWOOD – Bean Lumber Company made an official announcement Friday that the Glenwood sawmill, as reported in last week’s Glenwood Herald, will be reopening, just sooner than expected.

Tim Bean, president and Grady Bean, vice-president, made the announcement at the Glenwood City Hall before media representatives and Mayor Ron Martin.
The target start up date is Monday, May 5, according to Tim Bean.

“We will have one shift starting out. Right now it depends on the market,” he said.

The company will re-employ around 150 workers initially and will gradually increase that amount.

“The closing of Potlatch should help us,” Grady Bean said.

“We will rehire and also get some new people,” he added.

“We are accepting applications at our Glenwood office.”

Bean Lumber Company, one of Arkansas’ largest producers of softwood lumber, has been shut down since August 2007.

Last December, Great Southern Wood Products, Inc. of Abbeville, Ala. bought the Glenwood treatment plant. They are currently running two shifts with a third planned for this summer. Great Southern plans on making upwards of $5 million in improvements and upgrades to the Glenwood facility.

Bean reopened their Amity treating facility in December. They still own that facility as well as the Glenwood mill, the co-generation facility at Glenwood and the trucking companies in Amity and Fort Smith.

The co-generation facility operates on left over wood products and will be brought back up gradually. This is a turbine that generates electricity for the mill. The Beans have sold excess electricity they generate to Entergy in the past and plan to do so in the future.

“Right now, we are looking at an output of 350,000 board feet per day. That is under what we were,” Tim Bean said.

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