Custom Plywood Manufacturer
Builds Broad Customer Base

Mt. Baker Products Serves Nationwide Clientele

Article and photos by Dyas A. Lawson

“Resurrected” may not be too strong a term for Mt. Baker Products, a hardwood plywood manufacturer in Bellingham’s Squalicum Harbor. When the present owners, Swaner Hardwood Co. of Burbank, Calif., purchased then-Mt. Baker Plywood eight years ago, it was moribund — down to a dozen employees, only periodic manufacturing activity and in Chapter 11 proceedings.

Those 12 employees, who were part of a co-op, were offered the opportunity to stay and help rebuild the company, says Steve King, vice president of marketing and sales at Mt. Baker Products. He credits with positive attitudes and a strong work ethic those who accepted the challenge to help bring the plant back — and succeeded.

Now, the company boasts 185 employees working two shifts, produces 38 million square feet of high-quality hardwood plywood each year and grosses $44 million annually.

How did Swaner turn the company around?

According to King, the answer to that question revolves around the Swaner family’s penchant for long-term planning. The family wanted a secure, dependable plywood supply for its own purposes and also saw a niche market for selling plywood to smaller distributors that big manufacturers didn’t want to mess with.

 

Custom product niche

For that niche, Mt. Baker Products offers custom manufacturing to the clients’ specifications as well as a quick turnaround time — usually seven to 10 days. Clients are primarily distributors that have a small number of outlets. The company leans heavily on long-term relationships, which it tends to call “partnerships,” with them.

King speaks of maintaining loyalty to clients that have been loyal to Mt. Baker Products when things have gotten a bit sticky — it’s easy to see that loyalty looms large in both directions with this firm.

Some clients include Connecticut Plywood, Industrial Plywood of Reading, Pa., and others along the East Coast and elsewhere. “We have a nice smattering, a good, even coverage all across the country in most states, with a little empty spot around North and South Dakota and Nebraska,” King amplifies. “Not too much is going on there.”

Mt. Baker Products makes plywoods — usually in cherry, oak, red alder, walnut and white maple — that specifically meet its clients’ needs in such applications as furniture and cabinet making. That customer base, added to its emphasis on quality and service, has served the company well, King adds.

Mt. Baker has a strong commitment to quality, King states. It uses a core — which it manufactures itself — that’s close to free of voids, which means that the final users can install with screws without worrying about whether they’ll have something to anchor in. Add the application of additional glues to ensure the plywoods won’t come apart, or delaminate, and the use of high-grade veneers and you have a winner.

To make sure all those things go as smoothly as they should and quality remains high, every employee checks his/her production stage, a quality-assurance team roams the plant testing all phases of production, panels are graded twice (before and after sanding) and the glue supplier also performs its own on- and off-site quality checks on the bonds and bonding materials.

 

Environmental certification

In addition, Mt. Baker Products is one of a small number of mid-sized companies that has achieved Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which is sponsored by the Rainforest Alliance. Three years ago, Smart Wood, an organization approved to grant FSC certification, audited the company to ensure that its raw materials have documented chain of custody proving that they came from forests where harvesting practices meet social and environmental criteria.

Since then, says operations coordinator Tim Shannon, the company has been able to work its toes in the door of the market for those who want environmental certification — a developing market that King expects to grow, particularly in export markets. He says Mt. Baker Products is developing some products — such as alder, unusual species with FSC certification and extremely high-quality-core panels — specifically for the Pacific Rim market and others,.

“We’re looking at some other export markets that are getting in a position to accept higher-quality products,” he explains.

King adds that logging regulations that may cause some wood-products companies difficulties don’t really apply to Mt. Baker Products.

“We’re predominantly using soft woods, things like cottonwood, that aren’t part of the old-growth ecosystem,” he states. The products they use are cut and harvested in environmentally sensitive ways, as well.

Part of all the work to bring the company back to life has been renovations and equipment improvements, such as upgraded boiler and fuel-handling systems, alterations to processes that increase efficiency and decrease costs, a new sander line for sanding panels and others. Shannon says about $1.5 million to $2 million has gone into renovations in the last eight years.

 

Safety important

Mt. Baker Products has paid close attention to its safety record, too. Shawn Goenen, human resources manager, points out that injuries have been reduced 40 percent over the last three years and lost-time accidents are down by 80 percent. You can’t avoid the injuries endemic to a plywood plant — minor cuts, splinters, things like that — but bigger injuries are rare these days.

The plywood company believes in community participation and is involved with supporting local softball teams, donates to the Lions Club, the Everson library, Boy Scouts, YMCA, Red Cross, Wildlife Walk and others. It’s a major sponsor this year for the Maritime Festival, which benefits the Whatcom Hospice Foundation.

King explains that Mt. Baker Products has plans to sustain and even increase its growth. The company couldn’t be better located to take advantage of shipping from such ports as Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., and intends to use that proximity.

The philosophy of Mt. Baker Products is simple: “We want to produce the highest-quality product with the highest level of service and the fastest turnaround for the customer who values that, as opposed to just selling at a low price,” King declares. “We’re trying to have our market niche based on quality and dependability.

“We plan to continue growing in terms of employees,” adds King. “We want to see a nice, even growth of 5 to 10 percent a year. As long as our marketing philosophy continues to be successful, we don’t really see an end in sight.”