New Economic Growth for Ketchikan's Timber Industry.

• Author: SWAGEL, WILL
• Position: Brief Article

Ketchikan is one of the wettest cities in rainy Southeast Alaska and October is the rainiest month of the year. But Southeast's besieged timber industry felt a strong dose of sunshine that drenched month when Gateway Forest Products, a new timber company, took control of Ketchikan Pulp Co.'s Ward Cove sawmill.

The real excitement is centered around a project expected to break ground this winter--the construction of a new veneer plant employing up to 70 workers. Taken together, the sawmill and veneer plant operations should employ about 250, says Cliff Skillings, Gateway's director of corporate relations.

Workers at the veneer plant will spin logs on high-tech lathes to peel wide sheets of wood, mostly hemlock, which will be used for the facing of paneling or the core of plywood, depending on the quality of the log.

In Gateway's operational plans the highest quality logs go to the sawmill, where they are sawn into lumber, says Skillings. Then the lower grades of wood are sent to the veneer plant.

Jack Phelps, the Ketchikan-based executive director of the Alaska Forest...