February 9th 2010

By Zack Cinek

The Ukiah Daily Journal

February 9, 2010

Company feeling tempered' optimism

Mendocino Redwood Company is hiring again and bringing people back to work in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. It was in May 2009 that sister companies Mendocino Redwood Company and Humboldt Redwood Company announced job cuts due to a high inventories of logs and lumber.

"We have reduced our inventory and business is better," Richard Higgenbottom, CEO of Mendocino Forest Products, MRC and HRC said Monday. "We expect our mills to be busy," Higgenbottom said.

Hiring in the Ukiah area will be for about 24 positions, Higgenbottom said.

And redwood will not be the only logs going through the mill.

"We are now milling Douglas fir," Higgenbottom said, "With the closing of Harwood we are now milling our own Douglas fir," Higgenbottom said. The Harwood mill, located in Branscomb west of Laytonville, closed in 2008.

With the addition of Douglas fir milling, the MRC will no longer sell the Douglas fir logs that it brings in.

Some of the hiring at the Ukiah mill will be for a flexible team of workers that operate a planer and also make fence boards, Higgenbottom said.

Higgenbottom noted in a company letter that it is best for the companies to temper their optimism but there is reason for some good news in 2010.

In May the anticipated harvest for both Mendocino and Humboldt operations was 70 million board feet or less than one-third of the normal harvest.

The 2009 and 2010 harvest numbers will be above last spring's estimation, the company stated.

"We are on our way back," Higgenbottom said. "We have people on furlough and we have brought most of those people back," Higgenbottom said.

Zack Cinek can be reached at udjzc@pacific.net or 468-3521.