Hambro Group shuts down Crescent City particle board plant; Arcata plant to be sold

The ailing housing market is contributing to another industry causality — the closure of particle board manufacturers on the North Coast and throughout the country.

This month, the Crescent City-based Hambro Group announced the closure of its last particle board plant in Crescent City and the sale of its shuttered Arcata plant.

Pete Malliris, an associate editor for the forest products industry publication Random Lengths International, said it’s an industry-wide trend, particularly on the West Coast where there is not enough demand to keep mills up and running.

”The industry is going through a little bit of a transition because of what’s going on,” he said. “It’s very difficult to make money.”

Malliris said manufacturers also have been finding additional challenges in increasing production costs.

Hambro Group announced the closure in a letter sent to its customers and suppliers. The letter, dated Dec. 9, said it was dissolving and liquidating the assets of Humboldt Flakeboard in Arcata and Blue Ridge Panels in North Carolina. The Crescent City plant will be closed but left intact in hopes of using its equipment to create a new green energy product.

Hambro Chief Executive Officer Wes White said it’s unlikely the facility will reopen as a particle board plant.

”It will take a very good market to start this back up,” he said in a phone interview. “I have huge questions as to whether or not this plant will start again.”

The letter, signed by White, describes the effects of the housing market and how it is driving the company’s changes.

”This year we had hoped to experience a migration back to the ‘norm’ and thus experience resurgence in particleboard demand,” White wrote. “We are now of the belief that this will not occur, at least not in the near term.”

The Crescent City plant has been around for more than 40 years. At its peak, it employed 40 people. Currently, it employees about 24. That staffing will be reduced to 10 or 12 people, White said.

The Humboldt Flakeboard plant in Arcata, purchased by Hambro in 2002, employed about 60 people at its peak. Last year, Hambro shut down the plant. It employs five people who provide security.

Similarly, Hasbro’s North Carolina plant, purchased in 2007, was shut down last month. Its staff of 46 was reduced to five employees who provide security.

The Crescent City plant’s closure is especially tough for the economically depressed area.

The closure means shuttering an employer and one of the first particle board plants in the industry. The product is made by packing sawdust and wood chips together with resin, and it is often used in furniture.

Malliris said particle board was created as an alternative to burning leftover wood fibers — a process that caused pollution. The Crescent City plant was established in 1965.

”They would have been among the first, so it’s really kind of sad in that regard to see something like that go,” Malliris said.

White said the company is hoping to focus on its other businesses, which are based in Crescent City. Hambro WSG hauls garbage to the landfill, Eco-Nutrients creates compost from fish remains and kelp, Resource Recovery Solutions is a recycling company and Snoozie Shavings is a trucking company.

Donna Tam can be reached at 441-0532 or [email protected].

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