Sunday's Internet Edition, September 07, 2008.

“We didn’t buy these plants to shut them down,” Brian McManus, president and chief executive officer of Stella-Jones Inc., said.

The company, based in Montreal, completed the purchase of the five BPB plants last week in a deal valued at approximately $70 million.

Aside from the plant near Reedy, which was first wood treatment plant BPB opened more than 50 years ago, the company had plants at DuBois, Pa., Goshen, Va., and Stanton and Fulton, Ky.

Those plants were expected to remain open as well.

“BPB is a good company,” McManus said. “We just want to build on that.”

In fact, McManus said Stella-Jones plans to increase its presence in West Virginia. The BPB corporate office in Ripley will be expanded to become the headquarters for Stella-Jones’ U.S. operations.

McManus said four senior executives will be relocating to the Ripley office, which will be undergoing some renovations to accommodate the changes.

The acquisition of BPB’s five plants gives the Canadian company 15 wood treating facilities in North America, including seven in the U.S. The company bought a processing plant in Bangor, Wis., in 2005 and, earlier this year, acquired another in Arlington, Wash.

McManus said he hoped the BPB plants, including the one in Roane County, would grow in years ahead.

“It’s premature at this point to say there will be an expansion, but our goal always is to maximize production and grow,” he said. “We’ve done that with all our acquisitions.”

He said the plant in Bangor was expanded about a year and a half after being purchased by Stella-Jones with the addition of a third treating cylinder that meant additional jobs.

“If history repeats itself, there’s a good chance that could happen again,” he said.

The other two U.S. plants the company owned before BPB have just over 100 employees in all.

Including its Canadian operations, Stella-Jones had 475 employees in March 2007, with total sales of $224 million the previous year.

BPB reported 340 employees, including 100 in West Virginia, with total sales of $85 million in the year that ended March 31, 2007.

In addition to the five plants, he said Stella-Jones acquired another valuable asset from BPB.

“Aside from the obvious assets, we are most excited about the group of employees,” he said. “They seem to do an excellent job.”

Stella-Jones was established in 1992 to acquire the wood preserving division of Dotmar Inc., whose operations had existed since the early 1900s.

Its primary product was wooden utility poles, but pressure-treated railway ties have become a large part of the business. McManus said those two products account for 95 percent of the company’s sales.

He said about 90 percent of BPB’s product lines were for the railway industry. With the acquisition, he said about half of Stella-Jones’ sales would be to the railway industry.

“That’s clearly our focus,” he said.

McManus said the BPB name would live on, in one form or another.

“We’ll be keeping the BPB name, with Stella-Jones alongside it,” he said.

“We haven’t worked out all the details,” he said, “but BPB has a great reputation in our industry, and there’s no need to change it.”