Sanford Sawmill Closes, Goes on Market
- December 20th 2024
- Business Spotlight
An empty log yard and idle truck at Robbins Lumber Co. on New Dam Road.
Photo: Lee Burnett
By Lee Burnett
Robbins Lumber Co. has laid off more than 35 employees and shuttered its sawmill on New Dam Road, according to the company. About a dozen other employees who also lost jobs were offered jobs at Robbins’ sawmill in Baldwin.
“The Sanford mill unfortunately closed in August and is currently for sale,” company co-owner Catherine Robbins-Halsted wrote in an email this week.
It’s a sudden reversal for Robbins, which bought sawmills in Sanford and Hancock in May 2023. Both mills, which specialized in producing pine boards and millwork, are now closed and for sale. Hancock Lumber closed a pine sawmill in Madison, NH, in October.
Robbins-Halsted said a series of recent developments outside its control factored in its decision to close the Sanford mill, which operated as LaValley Lumber for years and later as Pleasant River Lumber.
“The mill closed due to changes in market conditions, the increase in electricity prices and the increase in labor costs by PFMLA,” Robbins-Halsted wrote. PFMLA refers to Maine’s Paid Family Medical Leave Act, which goes into effect Jan. 1.
The closure in Sanford hurts a chain of local people – loggers, truckers and foresters – who supplied the mill with logs. It also hurts T&D Wood Energy, a wood pellet manufacturer that had opened next to the mill six years ago for proximity to a source of sawmill residue and for shared infrastructure costs.
“We’ll keep on keeping on,” said Tony Wood, co-owner of the pellet plant. His company is shouldering higher electricity, heating and sprinkler costs and is shifting its sourcing of material for pellets. “It has increased our material costs a lot,” he said. Wood is eager to find a new compatible neighbor. He said the site could be attractive to a hardwood sawmill operator or some other industrial operator. “We’re terrified the use [of property] could totally change,” he said.
The pine market and other lumber markets have cooled off from their Covid-era boom, according to Ethan Bessey, a hardwood flooring and specialty wood suppler who also writes about lumber market conditions. “Complicating that is the labor shortage, which makes you think twice about pulling the trigger on anything,” he said. Maine is still home to seven high-production pine sawmills, owned by Robbins and three other companies, all of which compete in national markets. “Labor availability is the constant factor. There’s only so much you can pay someone to stack lumber or push boards through a saw, all of which are jobs that need to be done, but you can’t pay $100,000 to do those jobs.”
Robbins employees were given two months’ notice that the Sanford mill would be closing, according to Robbins-Halsted. They were offered full employment with benefits until closure and a bonus of $1,000 if they stayed until it closed or transferred to another Robbins site. Robbins works with the Department of Labor to help employees find other jobs. All employees were paid accrued benefits (vacation time and 401(k) retirement) and were offered COBRA insurance.
