Arizona Company Gears up for New Westside Mill

Arizona Company Gears up for New Westside Mill

Good Earth Power AZ, LLC (GEPAZ) has signed a lease on a 37-acre parcel in Williams, Az., to build a lumber mill and material processing facility.

With hopes to start site preparation before the end of the year, GEPAZ plans to begin producing lumber and wood chips by March 2015. The mill saw will be optimized to cut logs ranging from 7 to 9 inches in diameter.

Good Earth Power c.e.o. Jason Rosamond has expressed eagerness and excitement towards the process, explaining that his team is prepared to begin milling 50,000 bd. ft. a day. He added this would steadily increase until they are producing 300,000 bd. ft. daily. “We’d like to get the slabs in place before winter sets in so that we can establish the initial production line during the coming months,” announced Rosamond.

The Williams site will be utilized as the initial processing center for GEPAZ’s Soils Division. The facility will feature two bagging lines for composted and chipped products. A manual line will be used to bag soils and bark. A second, automated bagging line will have the ability to add color to chips for decorative landscaping uses.

Rosamond touched on expanding markets and increasing processing capacity, and how it will be necessary for restoration work to proceed at a faster pace. “We need to be restoring 2,000 to 2,500 acres a month by June 2015 to support the capacity that we are creating. That means more logging sides, more loggers, more truckers, and more jobs at all GEPAZ facilities,” he explained.

The company will complete the majority of the forest restoration work utilizing in-house capacity with some outsourcing based on interest from potential logging partners, allowing the ability to retain the necessary flexibility to respond promptly to changing customer requests, and to keep restoration moving forward in the forests.

According to Rosamond, there has been a considerable amount of money and resources invested in building infrastructure necessary to support active, long-term forest restoration. Despite the challenges faced thus far, he’s confident this will be a huge benefit for both Good Earth Power and the city of Williams. “Now the results of those efforts will be clearly visible through new jobs and economic development in the community and increasing restoration work in the forests.”