Spokane-based Potlatch Corp. has split its consumer products and paperboard division into two operations in a move that the forest-products company says reflects the vitality of its consumer-products business.


Potlatchs consumer-products division makes facial tissue, paper towels, toilet paper, and napkins that are sold by grocery stores and drug stores under the stores own labels. Its new paperboard division makes specialty cardboard thats used for a variety of purposes, including milk cartons, paper plates and cups, and to mount photographs.


Potlatchs consumer-products division is a leading supplier in the private-label tissue market in the Western U.S., says company spokesman Mike Sullivan. Its products, for example, account for 92 percent of such sales in grocery stores in the West, he says.


The market is strong enough that last fall Potlatch announced a $66 million expansion of its tissue-conversion plant in Las Vegas.


Besides that plant, Potlatchs Lewiston, Idaho-based consumer-products division oversees the companys tissue plant in Lewiston and tissue-conversion plant in Benton Harbor, Mich. The division now is headed by Craig Nelson, who formerly was vice president of the combined consumer products and paperboard division.


Potlatchs other new division, the pulp and paperboard division, also is based in Lewiston, and has operations in that city and in McGehee, Ark. It is headed by Harry Seamans, who previously was mill manager in McGehee.


Separately, Sullivan says Potlatch recently suspended most of its shipping on the Columbia-Snake river lock-and-dam system from its paperboard plant in Lewiston to the Port of Portland, Ore., because of scheduling snafus at the Oregon port.


The whole thing is tied to the shutdown of the West Coast ports last year, Sullivan says. That has screwed up the schedule for ocean carriers considerably.


For now, Potlatch is shipping products from Lewiston by rail and truck to the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, he says.


About 40 percent of the paperboard produced at Potlatchs Lewiston plant is exported to Pacific Rim nations, he says.


Although the cost of shipping by rail and truck is competitive at this point, in the long run, its easier and cheaper to ship by barge on the Columbia-Snake system, Sullivan says. Thats because there are more chances for products to get damaged in transit with the extra handling necessary to ship by rail and truck, he says.


Nevertheless, The big thing is making sure our shipments continue to get to our customers on time, regardless of what the economics are, he says. We will return to the river as soon as things get straightened out.