Chips Will Fly at Paper Firm Plant
Mead, Ontario – Newaygo Forest Products Ltd., a subsidiary of Consolidated Papers, Inc., Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., will dedicate its $5.2 million lumber-chip complex here Oct. 6.
The new facility – which has 92,000 square feet of space in five buildings – has the capacity to produce 75 million board feet of lumber and 80,000 tons of wood chips for pulping a year, the company said.
Some of the features, it said, are computer sorting of logs, extensive use of chippers rather than conventional saws and hydraulically powered and controlled equipment.
Newaygo said the complex would enable nearly complete utilization of trees: cutting lumber from the trees fist [sic], chipping what is usually edgings and slabs for pulping and using the bark and sawdust for fuel.
A sister subsidiary of Consolidated Papers, Newaygo Timber Co., Ltd., owns more than 350,000 acres of forest land in the Mead area and will provide most of the logs to be processed in the new facility.
Employment of the two companies is expected to reach 270 when the facility is in full operation. Delays in equipment deliveries have postponed the startup of operations except for the sawmill.
– Milwaukee Journal, Sep. 24, 1974 Sec2, p13
I’m not sure how to translate board feet of lumber into car loads, but a little “back of the napkin” figuring based on 70t/car works out to a capacity of about 4 cars/day (Mon-Fri service) of woodchips.
At its peak in ~1982 the AC woodchip car fleet comprised roughly 110 cars which were dedicated to service for Newaygo. When the mill at Mead slowed down and quit production in 1985, the woodchip car fleet was purged.
At the same time in the 1980s, the AC rostered 75 52′ bulkhead flatcars suitable for either lumber or steel products loading, and 60+ of the 40′ flatcars which were non-interchange and suitable for pulpwood loading to the mill along with cars from their fleet of 48-61′ gondolas.