About

Hunt Forest Products and its joint venture partner, Tolko Industries, Ltd., which recently joined SFPA, own and operate the two newest, state-of-the-art sawmills in Louisiana: LaSalle Lumber Co. is located in the central Louisiana town of Urania and began operations in March 2019, while Bienville Lumber Co., which is in the northwest corner of the state in Taylor, began operations in April 2024.

The two mills are similar in many respects. Both were built by Canada-based BID Group, which has developed a specialty in constructing modern, highly automated, turnkey sawmills (BID is also an SFPA associate member). Both mills are owned 50/50 by Hunt and Tolko, with Hunt running daily operations, and both are certified by the Southern Pine Inspection Bureau (also an SFPA associate member). The mills both produce dimensional lumber products:

• LaSalle produces a narrow mix of 2×4, 2×6, and 2×8 in 8’ to 20’ lengths.
• Bienville produces an additional width of 2×10 to complement its production of the same narrow widths as LaSalle.

Both mills offer the same graded product lines, which include MSR and a heavy component of No. 2 Prime, in addition to common Southern Pine grades. Both mills prioritize buying timber locally. The mills differ in size:

LaSalle is a single-saw line operation, employs 140 people, and requires about 850,000 tons of wood annually to produce about 200 million board feet of lumber annually

Bienville is a two-saw line facility, which employs 170 people at full operation and requires about 1.6 million tons of wood annually to produce about 400 million board feet of lumber per year.

Hunt Forest Products President and SFPA board member Richie LeBlanc, a Louisiana timber industry veteran, said Hunt learned valuable lessons in building and operating LaSalle and was able to apply what they learned at Bienville.

“From site preparation and facility design to truck and forklift traffic patterns, equipment choices, construction scheduling, on-site parts inventory, etc., we were able to save time in many areas,” LeBlanc said. “Bienville Lumber is a highly efficient facility where we can predictably get log trucks in and out in 14 minutes or less scale-to-scale. That’s a huge advantage, and those are the kind of gains you can make by working with experienced, trusted partners such as Tolko and BID Group.”

LeBlanc also said many members of Bienville’s operations crew were able to train at LaSalle as the new mill was being built, allowing them to hit the ground running as soon as operations began. Another big decision was to add the second saw line at Bienville now, rather than later, as originally planned.

“We knew we were going to do it eventually, and as we really dove into the project and became comfortable with what we thought we could achieve, it just made sense to move ahead with the second line and complete the overall project all at one time,” he said.

The second saw line began operating in June, and the mill is ramping up and on track to begin realizing its full output potential.

“It’s been an incredible journey since 2018,” LeBlanc said. “In Urania and Taylor, we invested more than $350 million to revitalize two brownfield sites that were part of Louisiana’s historic timber industry, we built the most modern, technologically advanced sawmills in the state, we created more than 300 new, high paying jobs, and we breathed new life into the forestry industry in our region.”

LeBlanc said the Hunt Forest Products team is proud of its partnership with Tolko and its great working relationship with the State of Louisiana.