U.K. home builders also see difficulty
Home builders in the United States aren’t the only ones seeing difficulty in the current economy. U.K. home builders have reported job cuts in the past week after housing sales have fallen off in that country.
Home builder Persimmon has said it will have cut 1,100 jobs by the end of the year because of the downturn in the housing market. The company characterized the past six months as “the most challenging period” in the company’s history.
“Due to the likelihood of the poorer market conditions continuing we have taken further steps to restructure our business and reduce overhead to a level which is more appropriate to our medium-term expectations of annual new home sales volumes,” the company said.
U.K. home builder Taylor Wimpey also said this week it would cut 900 jobs because of weakness in housing in the country. Today, a further U.K. home builder, Barratt Developments, said it would cut 1,200 jobs and also cut its dividend to shareholders because of the weakness in the housing market.
Weyerhaeuser to permanently close OSB mill
Forest products giant Weyerhaeuser will permanently close its idled Structurwood OSB mill in Drayton Valley, Alberta, Canada. The mill has been idled since December 2007.
Weyerhaeuser still maintains a dimensional softwood lumber sawmill in Drayton Valley, which it continues to operate.
“Factors that led to the original decision to idle the Drayton Valley Structurwood mill — the decline in the U.S. housing market and the high Canadian dollar — have not changed since that decision,” said Phil Dennett, vp-strand technologies for Weyerhaeuser, in a statement.
“Weyerhaeuser is working with the Government of Alberta to find ways to enhance the viability of our remaining mills in the region,” Dennett added, including a further mill in Edison, Alberta.
The mill originally employed around 130 people — some have moved to other areas of the Weyerhaeuser business, while some were given severance, the company said.
Weyerhaeuser out, BlueLinx in at AERT
Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies (AERT), the Springdale, Ark., makers of ChoiceDek, has formally ended its Lowe’s distribution agreement with Weyerhaeuser, according to a July 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). BlueLinx will replace Weyerhaeuser as the distributor of ChoiceDek decking and accessories to Lowe’s, which carries the products exclusively.
Terms of the BlueLinx agreement are similar to those in AERT’s previous Weyerhaeuser agreement, the company said in its SEC filing.
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Dec-05-2011 02:25 pm