Jeld-Wen, the global door and window maker based in Klamath Falls, has agreed to sell a $675 million minority stake in the company, and it has placed nearly 50,000 acres of Oregon land on the market.

Onex, a Canadian private equity firm, announced Wednesday it would buy a “significant minority interest” in Jeld-Wen, which employs between 400 and 450 people at two plants in Bend.

“We’re still going to be Jeld-Wen,” spokeswoman Teri Cline said Friday.

Considered Oregon’s largest private company, Jeld-Wen employs about 20,000 people on five continents. It generated more than $3 billion in revenues in 2010, according to the news release from Onex.

But Jeld-Wen has been affected by the severe and prolonged downturn in the economy, Cline said. The real estate crash sent new housing starts plummeting from more than 2 million nationwide in 2007 to about 586,000 last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“When you ramp up for that kind of business and the bottom drops off, you end up with a lot of capacity,” she said.

Selling the minority share also will enable the company to take advantage of new opportunities in the housing market, “ensuring long-term growth and security,” said Nigel Lapping, Jeld-Wen Australia Group chief executive, in a news release.

The trust of Richard Wendt, a Jeld-Wen founder, as well as Wendt family members, the employees and others will remain majority shareholders, Onex officials said in a news release announcing the deal. Wendt died in August at age 79.

Two weeks ago, Jeld-Wen put almost 50,000 acres of farm, ranch, recreation and timberland in Klamath County on the market.

To be sold in a sealed-bid auction, the land can be purchased in one package or as eight properties, according to the sales brochure from Realty Marketing/Northwest. As a single package, Jeld-Wen has set a reserve price of $24.8 million, or about $500 an acre, according to the sales material.

The largest separate parcel, the 20,000-acre Whiteline Ranch and Farm, has more than 50 million board feet of timber, according to the brochure.

It’s located east of U.S. Highway 97 and south of the Winema National Forest, and a portion of it has destination-resort zoning.

The sale is part of the company’s efforts to get rid of all its noncore assets, which included the sale of its destination resorts last year, according to the brochure and Cline.

In November, Jeld-Wen sold Eagle Crest near Redmond, Brasada Ranch in Powell Butte, and Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls, to Northview Hotel Group, based in Westport, Conn., and San Francisco, and private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management LP, according to The Bulletin’s archives.

The sale also included a gated residential community near the Running Y. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Jeld-Wen’s land and resorts sales are part of a process the company has undertaken over the last few years to re-examine its businesses, Cline said.

“Those are part of Jeld-Wen’s strategy to focus on our (core) business going forward,” she said.

In August, the company also ended its title sponsorship of The Tradition golf tournament, although in March it bought the naming rights to the former PGE Park. The new home of the Portland Timbers is now known as Jeld-Wen Field.