Environment-friendly facility to open soon

Construction is nearing completion for Innovative Pine Technologies/Lake States Lumber's 22,000-square-foot, $3 million remanufacturing and distribution facility for foreign and domestic forest products.

The company entered a long-term lease agreement with the Port Authority in 2002 for a nine-plus acre waterfront parcel at the Clure Public Marine Terminal for construction of the facility and for land to be used for outdoor storage and material staging.

Part of the Lakes States Lumber nine-acre site will be used for open storage of foreign and domestic forest products.

The operation, which will initially employ about 25 workers, is scheduled to open in March. An estimated 270 million board feet of lumber will move annually through the facility to independent lumberyards in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas and Illinois. About 20 percent of that lumber will be pressure treated with a new arsenic-free preservative recently approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition to buying wood from domestic and Canadian producers, the company plans to book about 10 European lumber shipments per year.