PRINEVILLE — From its North Main Street plant, Contact Industries has shipped its custom veneered components to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in North Carolina, the new World Trade Center in New York City and the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai.

The company, which has evolved from producing only basic moulding and other millwork to high-tech veneer products, employs 200 people, Casey Jackson, vice president of manufacturing, told about 50 people gathered Wednesday morning at a Crook County Foundation forum.

Portland-based Contact Industries opened a 1,000-square-foot Prineville manufacturing facility in 1955. Over the years, it’s grown to nearly 600,000 square feet with employees engineering veneer mouldings for architectural and commercial projects, as well as milled products for the window and door and furniture industries.

Prineville once boasted five operating sawmills, but the last one closed in 2001. Secondary wood products companies have also faced difficulties from overseas competitors.

To survive, Contact Industries has refocused its target market over the last 10 years, Jackson said.

While the company continues to use pine lumber for wood products, he said, it also uses hundreds of veneer wood species from around the world, and produces engineered components that use steel, aluminum, fiberglass and polyvinyl chloride.

To meet customers’ quality and production expectations, Jackson said, requires high-tech machinery and a staff with the skills to operate the equipment.

Contact Industries is one of Prineville’s largest private employers behind Woodgrain Millwork Inc., another secondary wood products manufacturer, said Russell Deboodt, Prineville/Crook County economic development manager of Economic Development for Central Oregon.

“Secondary wood products are immensely important to Prineville, not only in its culture and identity, but to the people who live and work here,” he said. “Wood products, behind the public sector … is still our biggest industry here in Prineville and employs the most people.”

Steve Forrester, Prineville city manager, said the benefit of Contact Industries to the city can’t be measured.

“I actually worked for this company back in the late ’80s early ’90s, and that’s when this technology started. We made trips to Spain, Germany, and we took the very beginnings of this technology and brought it to Prineville, Oregon,” he said.

“They’ve moved away from commodities, which a lot of people stayed in and are no longer in business. And to have this technology and this company in our community, and have it survive though some very difficult times and thrive, is remarkable.”