January 27, 2020 — January 2020 has seen decent trading so far. The first full two weeks of the month were relatively strong sales weeks for us, which is encouraging. As usual, many people are buying a little bit of wood, but no one is...
January 24, 2020 — Thanksgiving of last year Freres Lumber was subject to a ransomware attack which shutdown key systems and caused significant disruptions. Luckily, we were able to bring key systems back online within three weeks and recover information that was important for business...
January 13, 2020 — The New Year has shown little improvement in the plywood market since December. Plywood sales are still lackluster. It leaves one wondering where the market disappeared to. Have imports and increased OSB capacity really killed off a healthy panel market? Are...
December 27, 2019 — As a “part 2” discussion on robots in the wood products industry, I’d like to dive in to how robots have long been helpful in labor-intensive positions dealing with higher-value products; in our case, this applies to patching for visual grade...
December 23, 2019 — Commodity plywood markets are unyielding, limping into the holiday weeks with few changes in prices or in the marketplace. Customers seem content to stay the course—that is, buy their needs, only. No changes really. Prices are trading in a very narrow and low range. There...
December 20, 2019 — Fear of robots taking over the world began long before the Terminator movies brought human subjugation by Skynet to the screen. Even as children we have long read stories of John Henry fighting off the cold indifference of industrial progress with...
November 25, 2019 — The commodity plywood markets continue to be consistently mediocre, but that’s not all bad. Light to no inventory positions by most customers require them to be fill-in buying frequently. And due to a slight but welcome uptick in the level of...
November 18, 2019 — As some of you may know we are working on installing a beam and column processing line in the next couple of months. This is pretty exciting as we will be able to produce beams and columns up to 24” thick....
November 11, 2019 — With plywood panels expected to stabilize at current levels and veneer sales showing recent improvement, Freres continues investments in new products....
November 6, 2019 — Robert “Bob” Theodore Freres passed away on November 4, 2019 at the age of 90. He was born in the historic Brown House in Stayton, Oregon on July 20, 1929 to Theodore George and Tresa (Forrette) Freres. ...