In December of last year Biewer Lumber announced it would be locating to the City of Newton. The Midwest company has invested more than 85 million dollars in this project. Plant manager Jason Otto said they are in the early start of production. The company is expected to hire 125 employees and so far they have filled 60 positions. “We really didn’t start hiring until about mid September for employees,” said Otto.
Otto explained how the sawmill began running in the second week of December. He said employees are training to operate the equipment. It’s estimated it took eight months of construction before the reaching this point in the project. “It was a turn-key project by the BID Group for the mill. We didn’t have to worry about any of the construction phase. We just had to worry about staffing it and getting the materials here,” said Otto.
The company has 20 trucks that ride through the mill. By the time it reaches full production at least 100 trucks will stop in to weigh in lumber. “Our trucks will come and go across our scales and get inspected. We will make sure the logs meet our inspections. And then we will unload those trucks. They will weigh out empty. Then we will pay our loggers based off tonnage,” said Otto.
Newton Mayor David Carr said he has seen the affect the company has made on the area. “We’ve had people move down here, buy houses in the city and do business. You go to a restaurant and you see a lot of them in there. It is an addition. It’s a win-win situation for us,” said Carr.
Carr said the city and the county are both using funds to make the improvements to the site. The site will be fully functional late 2017.
From WTOK 11 News: https://www.wtok.com/content/news/Biewer-Sawmill-soon-to-be-up-and-running–407658705.html