Pine Bluff Native to Manage Reopened Sawmill at Glenwood

Brett Bray

Brett Bray has been hired as the general manager who will reopen next month the sawmill at Glenwood formerly operated by Bean Lumber Co.

The sawmill is now known as Caddo River Forest Products, a joint venture between Castle Hill Partners, McCaslin Barrow Henderson and Suwannee Lumber Co. It is expected to reopen on June 1, creating 130 direct and 300 indirect jobs producing Southern yellow pine lumber and by-products and market pulpwood for local pulp and paper mills.

Born and raised in Pine Bluff, Bray has 28 years of experience in the timber industry, according to an announcement by Bob McKagen, president and CEO of Suwannee Lumber of Cross City, Florida. “We were excited to invest in this sawmill and have the full confidence in Brett’s leadership skills and experience to build a team that will make Caddo River Forest Products into an industry leader and economic anchor in Glenwood,” McKagen said in the release.

Bray is a graduate Arkansas State University and the executive management program at Louisiana State University.

The sawmill at Glenwood (Pike County) was designed and built by Georgia Pacific and later operated by Bean Lumber Co., which shuttered the mill in 2010. Through bankruptcy proceedings, the plant ended up owned by CAT Financial, which sold it to Castle Hill Partners, a private investor in commercial properties based in Austin, Texas, and McCaslin Barrow Henderson, a timberland investment management organization in Dallas. Suwannee Lumber Co., through its private equity investor, Blue Wolf Capital of New York, invested last fall to form Caddo River Forest Products.