Mercer International Inc. of Vancouver announced that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge has approved its proposed $81.1 million acquisition of Structurlam Mass Timber Corp., setting the stage for operations to resume at Structurlam's 288,000-SF facility in Conway.
The transaction is expected to be completed "shortly," Mercer said in a news release. The publicly traded company (Nasdaq: MERC) said the Conway plant will help it expand production of cross-laminated timber, or CLT, and glued laminated timber, ultimately growing the company's market share in the North American construction business. It said the facility's location also provides access to growing construction markets and a "large and high-quality regional wood basket."
Juan Carlos Bueno, president and CEO of Mercer, called the plant in Conway one of the most modern mass timber facilities on the continent. The plant has available production capacity of more than 1 million cubic feet annually.
"The acquisition of the Structurlam assets is consistent with our strategy to expand and diversify our product mix in our solid wood segment and build out our existing mass timber business," Bueno said in a statement. "The acquisition will materially increase our existing production capacity and cement our position as a leading producer of mass timber products."
Canada-based Structurlam opened the Conway plant in 2021. It suspended operations in January and laid off 144 of its 168 employees at the plant after Walmart Inc. of Bentonville canceled a production deal with the company.
Structurlam then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and agreed to sell the company under a deal initially valued at $60 million.
Under the deal, Mercer will acquire substantially all of Structurlam's assets, including three facilities in British Columbia, Canada.
Mercer currently operates a mass timber facility in Spokane Valley, Washington. In addition to the U.S. and Canada, it has operations in Germany. The company said it has a consolidated annual production capacity of 2.3 million tons of pulp, 960 million board feet of lumber, 140,000 cubic meters of cross-laminated timber, 17 million pallets and 150,000 metric tons of wood pellets.
