Saws humming along at the Saratoga mill

The biggest mill in 400 miles started operating in Saratoga in mid-December and the cold weather over the past few weeks has highlighted the smoke coming out of the stacks above the by-product fed kilns.

The mill has been idle for 10 years and the new owners have refurbished existing machines and installed new equipment and brought personnel from the manufacturers of the equipment to help with the start up.

“Every day it has been progressing,” Clint George, partner in Saratoga Forest Products (SFP) management, said. “We’re getting higher and higher speeds. Now it is a question of little things you have to adjust - you’ll have a link on a chain break and it takes you down for an hour - all a normal part of a sawmill.”

SFP is making eight and nine foot studs and selling to firms that supply commercial builders. The mill is not marketing to big box stores like Lowe’s or Menard’s.

“The builders love this product,” George said. “It comes out straight and its very well-milled.”

SFP is milling some beetle-kill wood which comes out straighter than normal wood because of its dryness, but even before beetle-kill the mill had a reputation for straight lumber.

“Its trade name was ‘Saratoga Straight’ and the name captures what we’re producing,” George said. “We’re marketing our lumber under that name.”

SFP owners plan to have 80 employees working in the plant when the mill is fully operational and they wanted most of them to come from this area. With a lower town population and fewer skilled mill workers since the mill was shuttered for 10 years, it seemed like an audacious goal.

“When we started this project, we didn’t know what our hurdles were going to be and one of the big hurdles was are we going to have enough people?” George said. “Very few people came from outside this area which is exactly what we wanted.”

A grant from Wyoming Workforce to train employees was a big factor in helping mill owners recruit and train inexperienced locals.

“We bring them in and show them how to do things at a very high level and these are guys that have not operated that kind of equipment,” George said.

The mill has the advantage of being the largest in 400 miles which limits competition for the wood source - its not economical to haul logs for long distances.

Shipping finished product is a different story though. The mill is using trucks to haul finished studs and has considered railroad transport, but will only use it to ship byproduct.

The mill produces 200 tons of sawdust, chips and shavings every day, and those byproducts can be put to all kinds of uses from pellets, to paper, to applications in the oil field, to horse bedding.