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Company representative outlines mass-timber fabrication plans in Estacada
Summary
A company representative described a 40,000-square-foot CLT fabrication operation in Estacada, Clackamas County, and said the site will use a Hundegger PBA Drive and could expand to 200,000 square feet with two shifts and an eventual output of about four truckloads a day.
A company representative described plans to expand mass-timber fabrication in Estacada, saying the operation uses cross-laminated timber (CLT) and specialized CNC machinery to cut and finish panels for manufacturers and contractors.
The presenter said the business began in Tennessee in 2002 to pre-cut heavy timber for companies without CNC equipment and later broadened from timber-frame components into mass-timber panel fabrication. “We cut panels for companies like manufacturers who make pressing the panels,” the presenter said, adding that pressing can be fast but fabrication is the bottleneck: “Press is quick. Cutting is slow. So, we focus on just the fabrication.”
The company representative described the Estacada site as a roughly 40,000-square-foot manufacturing area attached to an office and explained CLT as cross-laminated layers of boards that avoid settling seen in traditional log-beam construction. He said the site is equipped with a Hundegger PBA Drive — “the first one in the United States with that development” — which can machine all six sides of CLT panels and is significantly faster than traditional machines. Panels arrive from manufacturers, are processed on the machine, finished on the other side, and sequenced for shipment with each piece individually numbered for placement on job sites.
On production capacity and plans, the presenter said the company controls five acres and is operating about 40,000 square feet now, with plans that could support up to 200,000 square feet. He estimated that at full speed the operation could produce about four truckloads a day. The representative also said the site was chosen in Clackamas County because local permitting and regulations were easier than in the Portland area or King County, Washington: “Here we can handle it very easy and permit is done in a couple weeks.”
The presenter said the company intends to staff the facility with two shifts as it grows and emphasized the importance of local quality-of-life factors for recruiting and retaining employees, citing proximity to the Pacific and Mount Hood. No local government approvals, incentive amounts, company name or specific hiring timelines were provided in the remarks.
The representative did not provide a company name, specific contracts or client names, or independent verification of the machine’s U.S. status; those details were not specified in the transcript.
