Omak Wood Products LLC has ramped up production and increased its workforce a year and a half after upgrading and reopening a long-closed plywood mill about 140 miles northwest of Spokane, says Dick Baldwin, the mill’s president.

The mill is located in the north-central Washington town of Omak, near the west edge of the Colville Indian Reservation.

Through a partnership between private investors and the Colville Tribal Federal Corp., which owns the mill, Baldwin says, “We’ve got a good timber base, an excellent workforce, a modern facility, and a growing number of customers that like our product. We think that creates the ingredients for a long-term success story.”

Omak Wood Products LLC was formed in 2013 through an agreement in which parent company New Wood Resources LLC signed a 25-year mill lease with the Colville Tribal Federal Corp.

The company currently employs 177 people, including 150 salaried employees and 27 administrative employees at the mill, Baldwin says.

The mill is running three shifts six days a week and plans to go to around-the-clock operations this year, at which time it will have 200 employees, he says.

“We’re gearing up in that direction,” Baldwin says. “We’ve been in a continuous hiring process since the fourth quarter.”

Omak Wood Products manufactures 2.5 million board feet of veneer per week. When the mill reaches full capacity later this year, it’s expected to produce more than 3 million board feet per week, the company says in a recently released report on the status of the Omak operations.

If veneer prices remain stable, the mill’s 2015 revenue is expected to exceed $40 million, the report says.

In 2014, Omak Wood Products’ first full year of operation, the mill paid out $10.6 million in wages, salaries, and benefits, Baldwin says.

Omak Wood Products’ log purchases from Colville Tribal lands totaled $16 million, he says.

The entry level wage at the mill is $12.50 to $13 an hour, which is significant for a rural, economically depressed community, Baldwin contends.

Originally operated by the Biles-Coleman Lumber Co., the mill’s roots in Omak go back to the 1920s.

The Colville Tribal Federal Corp. bought the mill out of receivership in 2001 after it had gone through two bankruptcies and four ownership changes.

The lease agreement recognizes hiring preferences for members of the Colville tribes and other American Indians. About 60 percent of the mill’s current employees are Native Americans.

The lease agreement also ensures a sustainable supply of logs from tribal lands. The Colville Reservation encompasses 2.1 million acres of land in portions of Okanogan and Ferry counties.

The mill, which had been closed since 2009, reopened in late 2013 with 87 employees, making single-layer sheets of wood called veneer to be sold to other plywood and laminated veneer producers.

“Veneer is just one thin layer that usually goes to plywood or laminated veneer producers,” Baldwin says. “We felt we could create more value by continuing to sell some veneer and going the extra step; making plywood is something that will help us further develop business.”

Plywood is made up of multiple layers of veneer pressed and glued together with the wood grain aligned in alternating directions to increase its strength and stability.

Omak Wood Products continues to ship veneer to laminated veneer and plywood plants for special uses, he says, although now, 70 percent of the mill’s production is converted to plywood at the mill site, Baldwin says.

The mill currently produces a basic mix of plywood products. “We will expand that going forward as the mill matures and the skills of the workers develop,” he says.

Factoring in a calculation called the job multiplier effect, Baldwin says each job at a plywood plant is believed to support indirectly 2.5 other jobs in the community, meaning the mill is helping to create roughly 440 additional jobs.

“We’ve been at this a little over a year and we’re just starting to see the economic benefits of what this is going to do to Omak, Okanogan County, and the immediate area,” he says.

Employment numbers from the Washington state Employment Security Department, show that total jobs in Okanogan County had declined annually between 2007 and 2013, before rebounding by 290 jobs in 2014.

The county’s average unemployment rate for 2014 was 7.4 percent, compared with the year-earlier rate of 8.7 percent. Okanogan County had an estimated 2014 population of 41,300.

Though he declines to disclose what it cost to make the mill operational, Baldwin says Omak Wood Products invested millions of dollars modernizing the plant, because some of the antiquated equipment wasn’t designed to comply with various subsequent federal environmental regulations and worker-safety rules.

“We tried to take what was there and upgrade it,” he says. “We spent a lot of money on equipment so operations meet environmental and safety (standards).”

Baldwin says the plywood industry is stabilizing and seeing growth in demand following years of significant downsizing throughout the country during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. “The Industry lost half the production capacity in the South and had additional losses in the West,” he says.

Baldwin says it’s a rarity in recent years for a shuttered lumber mill to reopen, because most mills that closed during the Great Recession have been dismantled.

“There’s not that many left to reopen,” he says. “Remaining mills are in a situation now in which demand and supply is quite good for the producer.”

Plywood has a strong future, Baldwin asserts.

“I’ve been in the plywood industry for quite a number of years and watched it evolve,” he says. “The plywood industry has gone from customer-specific products to residential supply sheeting, and now it’s coming back to industrial uses.”

The Colville Tribal Federal Corp., based in Coulee Dam, Wash., is the business arm of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

The corporation manages 13 enterprises including wood products, gaming, recreation, tourism, retail and construction companies that together employ more than 800 people and generate $120 million in annual revenue.

New Wood Resources, a subsidiary of Greenwich, Conn.-based Atlas Holdings LLC, also operates plywood and veneer mills in Shelton, Wash., and Louisville, Miss.