Willamette Industries has announced plans to close its Ruston, Louisiana plywood plant - built in 1966 as one of the earliest Southern Pine plywood manufacturers when the industry began its move from the West Coast.

Plant operations will be phased out during the rest of this year, with an estimated closure date of January 15, 2001, according to a company announcement. The plant employs 245 people.

The company said discussions with the union representing the workers at the Ruston plant have begun, to determine details of the shutdown. Willamette Industries owns nine other building materials operations within a 37 mile radius of the Ruston plant, employing 1,014 people. Displaced Ruston workers will be given opportunity to apply at these facilities, the company said.

The Ruston plant began as a joint venture between Portland, Oregon-based Willamette and the T.L. James Company of Ruston, then a major heavy construction and natural resources company. It first operated as Santiam Southern company.

The decision to close the 34-year-old plant came because it was no longer competitive in a shrinking market for plywood products, said Duane McDougall, president and CEO. "The principal product of the mill was commodity grade sheathing. Oriented strand board (OSB) has made significant inroads into this market, and we see the trend continuing," McDougall said.

Willamette operates other plywood mills at Dodson, in conjunction with its major sawmill, at Zwolle, Louisiana, and Emerson, Arkansas. These mills are more modern, and "can compete with anybody in the world," said Wayne Parker of Ruston, Regional Vice President, who manages Willamette's Louisiana and Arkansas Southern Region.

The company has spent $3 million within the past three years to bring the Ruston mill to current standards, officials said, but with shrinking demand for plywood, additional expenditures to improve output offer diminishing returns.

Among the products coming out of the Ruston plant is veneer used in manufacturing laminated veneer lumber (LVL), an engineered wood product produced at Willamette's Simsboro, Louisiana plant. The Dodson mill will pick up the production of veneer for the LVL plant.

Willamette also produces laminated beams, paper, and medium density fiberboard (MDF), in addition to its dimension lumber products in its Louisiana and Arkansas plants, and manages a large forestry and logging operation, plus landowner assistance for private forest landowners in the region.