Staff Writer
NEW LIMERICK — Roughly half the employees at New Limerick’s Louisiana Pacific mill were laid off this week.
Mary Cohn, corporate affairs manager for LP, said Tuesday morning that between 70 and 75 employees were affected by the shutdown that’s expected to last about three weeks.
“The reason is we just can’t justify making the OSB [oriented strand board] at the plant in the current low-demand environment,” she explained. “It’s not everybody [that’s being laid off]. It’s about half the people. We’ve kept a lot of the people to work on other things.”
Cohn said laid-off employees will be called back before the end of the March.
“People will be called back on March 17 to start up the LSL line,” she said.
The mill, which has historically produced OSB, is in the process of starting up a new line of equipment to produce a completely new product called Solid Start Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL). The mill broke ground September 2006 on a massive addition to make room for the LSL line, and plant manager Skip Cleary said recently that they’re expecting to produce LSL by April. This production change added about 50 new employees to the mill and, at the project’s peak, roughly 400 contractors to work on new equipment and construction.
