BEMIDJI
Norbord's oriented strand board plant in Solway, Minn., is giving its plant employees an unplanned long weekend.
"We shut down at 3 p.m. today, and we anticipate starting up at 7 a.m. Tuesday," said Jack Wallingford, Solway plant general manager.
He said the outage is due to lack of wood for making the oriented strand board the plant produces.
Wallingford said the weekend's outage is the third this year. The other two were dedicated to maintenance operations.
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About 140 employees work at the Solway Norbord plant, with about 100 affected by the outage.
Ainsworth, an OSB plant east of Bemidji, closed down operations indefinitely earlier this month because of the housing starts slowdown.
"For us, it's not lack of orders," Wallingford said. "It's lack of wood for pulpwood right now."
He said the main factor in the lack of wood has been the wet fall. When the weather stabilizes, he said, the logs supply should improve.
Norbord is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Wallingford said the company continues to invest in the Solway plant with $7 million in a series of pollution control devices installed in the last two or three years and $3 million in press room improvements during the summer.
The Bemidji Pioneer and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
