Consolidated Pine, a wood molding maker in Prineville closed since January, is for sale. (The Tiger Group photo)

The closing of Consolidated Pine in Prineville earlier this year ended a third-generation family operation that started 64 years ago.

Mark Shirvan, president and CEO of Consolidated Companies, the New Jersey-based parent of Consolidated Pine, said surrendering his family’s involvement in Central Oregon is tough to do.

“We owned the company for a long time, and we’re passionate about the people that worked for us,” Shirvan said June 30. “It was very difficult for us. The focus of our sales was on our own distribution arm. We sold to others, but not to the level that we wanted.”

Consolidated Companies attempted to keep the doors of its Prineville operation open by taking on investors from the Tzar Investment Group, of Providence, Rhode Island, and New York City, in May 2016. That deal fell apart, and now the plant, which closed in January, is for sale. The real estate broker, Tiger Group, listed no asking price, but instead is seeking offers.

A prospective buyer could resume operations or dispose of the equipment and 23 acres piecemeal. In addition to forklifts, routers, lathes, band saws and molders, the property comes with rail spurs, phone lines and the company name. Shirvan said he could not guarantee a buyer would keep the operation intact, although he said he hoped a local consortium would step up and take it over. Interest in that option appears to be slim. About 30 jobs went away when the plant, which made decorative, finger-joint molding for home interiors, closed.

Hirak Biswas, CEO and principal at Tzar, at the time said he planned to pump fresh capital into the molding manufacturer on Lamonta Road and expand its reach eventually to overseas markets. Thursday, he said he’s still interested in buying not just Consolidated Pine, but its parent company, too.

“We had a strategy on how to turn the company around,” he said. “If I acquired the company today, we can turn it around.”

The two men said they have not recently spoken to one another. Shirvan said he was misled by Biswas, who, in response, said Consolidated Pine was overvalued by its owners and poorly managed. Biswas said his business partner Ravi Gadiraju is still in touch with Shirvan and a deal may yet be struck.

“My interest is only in the whole company,” Biswas said. “I don’t have any bad blood.”

Any attempt to resurrect the molding plant must reckon with a regulatory environment meant to protect the nearby national forests from which raw materials come and with competition from overseas wood-product makers. Crook County Commissioner Jerry Brummer, who has 25 years experience running a sawmill, said the time may soon come in which a smaller-scale version of the forest-products economy is revived. Public pressure to establish forest management practices that sustain local jobs is bearing fruit through organizations like the Ochoco Forest Restoration Collaborative.

“I think we’re going to see some things happen,” he said Thursday. “Now we’re working with the Forest Service and other groups to get another mill in. It’ll never be like the heyday, when we had five mills running.”

Crook County Judge Seth Crawford, in effect the county commission chairman, said that whatever becomes of Consolidated Pine, the bottom line is job creation. The county will work with whoever buys the facility to make it successful. The area is within an Oregon enterprise zone, making businesses there eligible for tax credits in exchange for creating jobs.

“Crook County is open for business,” Crawford said Friday. “We’ll do whatever we need to do to bring manufacturing jobs (to the area). We’re going to get that done.”

In the past, sawmills provided locally sourced raw material to the makers of wood molding, windows and doors in Prineville, Brummer said. Now that lumber is harvested elsewhere and cut at mills in Gilchrist or John Day, he said, which adds insurmountable costs to companies like Consolidated Pine, which used to run its own sawmill.

Consolidated Pine once served as the sole source of finished products that Consolidated Companies marketed from its East Coast distribution point.

Now, cheaper imports from Chile, China and Brazil dominate the market, Biswas said. But, he said, American-made wood products still command a premium price overseas because of their quality. In India, a new condo, for example, with American-made moldings or doors is as much a status symbol as some American automobiles, he said.

“Marketing is the most critical part,” Biswas said. “But the product sells. And we had one leg up because of having a connection in India.”

However, the plant needs updated equipment, and its owners overvalued the company, he said. When Biswas visited Prineville 1½ years ago and met with employees, they were enthusiastic about bringing the plant back to competitive life.

“The overall idea, the company needs to be overhauled,” Biswas said.

Shirvan expressed a different view. The real value in Consolidated Pine lies in keeping the operation intact, he said, but his agreement with Biswas ends there. Consolidated Pine “is still a viable business,” but not on his companies’ budget, he said. He said Biswas had unreasonable expectations.

“Whether his intent was to follow through on the deal, obviously he didn’t,” Shirvan said. “Mr. Biswas was not earnest. He knew nothing about our business.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, 
jditzler@bendbulletin.com