\(/ood Conversion Company Announc€s Extensive Plant Expansion

St. Paul, Minn., January D, Ig4f,.._Plans embracing an extensive four-year plant expansion for the Wood Conversion Company became known today when E. W. Davis, the company's president, announced the completion of a new large-capacity steam generating plant at Cloquet, Minnesota. The company, one of the Weyerhaeuser Forest Products group, distributes its insulation, building material and industrial products nationally. Headquarters are in St. Paul, with sales offices in Chicago and New York, while the products are manufactured in Cloquet.

Begun shortly after V-J Day, the company's large-scale expansion of its production facilities will be completed during 1948 and will virtually double the company's combined production capacity of Balsam-Wool blanket insulation, Nu-Wood insulation products, Tufilex wood fiber felts and other industrial products such as low temperature insulating fiber. According to Mr. Davis, completion of the program will also substantially increase the number of Wood Conversion Company employees, now totaling over 1,000 at the Cloquet plant and in the company offices.

Details of the expansion program were given by Mr. Davis in an interview today. "In addition to the new steam .plant," he said, "the program is comprised of the following projects: the Balsam-Wool plant is being enlarged and its equipment expanded to nearly double the present output. Also being erected are a Nu-Wood board machine, a new wood preparation and processing plant, and a new mill to produce pulp for making Nu-Wood products' The size of the Tufflex plant will be expanded to more than double the present outPut."

The new boiler plant, under construction since early in 1946 and now in operation, was designed by Pfeifer & Schultz, consulting engineers, with Power Service Corporation as the general contractors. The steam generating unit consists of a Babcock & Wilcox 600 pound pressure boiler with integral furnace equipped to burn either pulverized coal or oil and having a generating capacity of 100,000 pounds of steam Per hour.

"The building housing the new boiler is of steel and masonry construction, and is designed to provide for additional boiler installations as future plant expansion be- comes necessarf. Provisions have been made for using the high-pressure steam to generate electricity when the occasion demands. Along with the new steam capacity, all other plant services are being increased proportionately, including water supply, electric power, materials handling and trackage facilities."

Relieves Over-taxed Plant Facilities

"The new steam plant marks an important step in the over-all program," Mr. Davis stated, "since it relieves the over-taxed plant facilities resulting from the increased demands of the building industry, as well as of the many new. industrial markets created with the advent of Tufflex products."

According to D. M. Pattie, vice president and general manager of the company, Tufflex, the nell'est addition to the Wood Conversion Company's line of products, was developed in the company's laboratory following Pearl Harbor and served many urgent war needs. "At the war's

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