International Paper’s $6.6 billion purchase of Union Camp Corp., announced in November, is scheduled to close at the end of the first quarter. The deal will increase IP’s timber base to approximately 7.8 million acres. IP, headquartered in Purchase, NY, and Wayne, NJ-based Union Camp reported sales in 1997 of $20.1 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively. IP Chairman and CEO John Dillon will continue to serve as Chairman and CEO of IP. Union Camp Chairman and CEO, W. Craig McClelland, is scheduled to retire in April.

Just 14 years ago, state and federal foresters welcomed Biewer Lumber Co. to McBain with open arms. The greenfield sawmill facility, the first of the company’s two sawmill operations, would be providing a market for the previously underutilized red pine resource in the region. The resource was both affordable and plentiful. The challenge for Biewer at that time was to develop a market for red pine timbers, which the complex was to produce for the company’s four treating operations.

The final numbers are being tabulated as you read this, and it’s anticipated that U.S. softwood lumber demand set a record in 1998, approaching 52 billion BF. Southern and Western softwood lumbermen are jumping for joy, right? Wrong. Hello Asia. Western U.S. lumber exports to Asia fell 50-60% in 1998, but Western lumber production was even with the previous year, 16-17 billion BF, and southern pine lumber production, in the neighborhood of 16 billion BF, may have had only a slight dip.

Jimmy Rane and his company, Great Southern Wood Preserving, Inc., are widely known among Southern sports fans. Regular viewers of television sports events have become accustomed to seeing commercials broadcast by Rane and Great Southern Wood Preserving. Since 1986, beginning with former Auburn University head football coach Pat Dye, Rane has used major university coaches in the South to help market his product—southern yellow pine pressure-treated with Osmose brand CCA (chromated copper arsenate).

When Murry Toler rejoined his father’s sawmill company in 1946 after a four year stint in the service, he had no idea about the kind of corporate investments he’d be approving nearly 50 years later. In fact, when the (then) 23-year-old Toler came back to the company—as a log scaler—he didn’t even have visions of one day running the company, as he was the youngest of three brothers active in H.G. Toler & Son Lumber Co., Inc.

Louisiana-Pacific is converting its Chip-N-Saw line at Cypress, Fla. to an Iggesund Tools TurnKnife System. Gilman Building Products, Lake Butler, Fla., has chosen Iggesund to supply the adjustable knife system for the chipping heads in its Chip-N-Saw line.

One of the effects of the emerging global market economy in recent years has been a re-posturing of the corporate structure to maintain competitiveness. The trend in industry has shifted toward becoming a bigger, stronger, and more streamlined and centralized organization. That trend was a primary impetus behind the sale of family-owned Isaacson Lumber Co., based here, to pallet giant PalEx, Inc. last August.

Progress Industries Inc. introduces a line of balanced vibrating conveyors. The new line of conveyors may be set on a flat surface for operation and do not require substantial concrete foundations. As with other Progress vibrating conveyors, the balanced versions are built in modular 10' sections. Trough and counterbalance are supported by flat, fiberglass springs rather than coil springs.