Global forest products company Rayonier announced Tuesday it has reached an agreement to sell all assets of its wood product business, headquartered in Baxley, to International Forest Products Limited (Interfor) for $80 million.
Rayonier’s wood products business consists of three lumber mills located in Baxley, Swainsboro and Eatonton. As part of the transaction, Interfor has agreed to hire all 260 current Wood Products employees.
The sale, expected to close this quarter, will result in an after-tax gain of about $40 million. The three mills contributed about $10 million in operating income to Rayonier in 2012.
Headquartered in Jacksonville, the publicly traded company (NYSE: RYN) with $1.5 billion in annual revenues and a market capitalization of $5.5 billion, boasts more than 1,800 employees on three continents, some 1,200 of them in Georgia, by far the company’s largest footprint.
In addition to the three lumber mills, the company has a performance fibers mill and marketing and research center in Jesup, wood chip mills in Offerman, Eastman, Collins and Barnesville, a seedling nursery in Glennville, more than 700,000 acres of working forests and an annual economic impact of more than $400 million.
“This sale represents another key move in our strategy to fully position our manufacturing operations in the specialty chemicals sector,” said Paul Boynton, Rayonier chairman, president and CEO. “At the same time, the conversion of our commodity fluff pulp business to cellulose specialties remains on track for mid-2013 startup.
“We are delighted with this opportunity to transition our wood products operations to a world-class company focused on lumber and wood products manufacturing,” he said. “Rayonier has enjoyed a long association with Interfor, supplying their lumber business in the Pacific Northwest for many years, and we look forward to expanding that relationship into the Southeast.”
Interfor, based in Vancouver, B.C., is a leading producer of lumber and wood products, primarily in the Northwest U.S. and Canada. This will be its first acquisition of manufacturing assets in the Southeast U.S.
RAYONIER: ABOUT THE COMPANY
Rayonier — its name a nod both to the manmade fiber it helped develop and its beginnings in the shadow of Mount Rainier — is a leading producer of performance fibers used in everything from pancake syrup, muffin mix and time-release capsules to flat-screen TVs, Fram oil filters and Michelin high-speed tires.
Structured as a real estate investment trust, the company owns, leases or manages 2.7 million acres of timber and land in the United States and New Zealand, including approximately 200,000 acres with residential and commercial development potential along the Interstate 95 corridor between Savannah and Daytona Beach, Fla.
Approximately 45 percent of the company’s sales are outside the U.S. to customers in approximately 40 countries.
ON THE WEB
For more information about Rayonier go to www.rayonier.com.