Wawa's mill is changing hands once again - and changing its function.
Nashville-based LP Building Solutions has announced a definitive agreement with Forex Inc. for LP to acquire the assets owned by Wawa OSB Inc., which is a subsidiary of Forex - that includes the manufacturing facility just outside Wawa, which LP plans to convert into an LP SmartSide Trim and Siding Mill, expected to add about 400-million square feet of capacity, which would make it LP's largest single-line siding mill.
According to LP, the conversion "will bring more than 150 sustainable jobs to the region", and it touts the site as "an ideal location for SmartSide production due to its access to an ample and sustainable aspen wood basket and efficient logistics options".
The facility was built as an OSB plant in the mid-1990s but shut down in 2007, then sold in 2013 and converted to a pellet mill which idled in 2017.
Wawa OSB had started ramping up plans to convert the former pellet mill back to an oriented strandboard mill last year, with the provincial government last April announcing a conditional grant of $15-million over four years to leverage over $170-million and creating "hundreds of new jobs" and bring the forest sector "back in a big way" to Wawa, and the company claimed last summer the plant should have 140 direct jobs, producing 530,000 cubic metres of OSB at full capacity, aiming to open this summer or fall, but the unprecedented peak in OSB and lumber prices in 2021 and early 2022 sharply declined in the latter half of 2022, and Forex & Wawa OSB filed for creditor protection more than two months ago.