2 business owners reopen Corinth mill

CORINTH – A defunct lumber mill has come back to life on Exeter Road, helping to provide its new owners with a vertically integrated supply outlet for the materials they deal with in their other businesses.

Brian Souers owns Treeline Inc. in Lincoln and Randy Comber co-owns Moosehead Cedar Log Homes in Greenville with his wife, Lucy Comber. By teaming up to purchase the former Blackwell Lumber facility, they thought it would help to have a place where timber harvested by Souers’ company could be processed and where custom lumber pieces could be cut for the Combers’ home-building business.

Souers said Friday that Treeline Inc. actually does not provide much of the timber used at the renamed Custom Lumber Co. Mill. He said he viewed the acquisition as a chance to restart what had been a successful operation.

The mill’s former owner, Del Blackwell, had decided to retire and sell the mill four years ago but the prospective owner ended up changing his mind, according to Souers. So the mill sat empty and unused simply because of a lack of interest, not because it wasn’t a viable enterprise.

“I was motivated by the fact that it was a recently excellent mill,” Souers said. “It had a good strong market when it shut down.”

Randy Comber’s interest in buying the mill was more strongly motivated by his desire to find a lumber supplier for his log home business, Souers said. Attempts to contact Comber this week were unsuccessful.

Souers said the mill cuts and sells a regular line of lumber but also cuts custom pieces for use in log homes. It sells a variety of wood types, not just from one species of tree, and specializes in unique or rare pieces of lumber – such as a 2-by-4 that actually measures 2 inches by 4 inches – that other mills do not.

“That mill lives on specialty markets,” Souers said. “It doesn’t compete head-to-head with high-production mills.”

Fifteen people work at the mill, an increase of half a dozen positions or so from the number of employees who worked at the facility for Blackwell when it closed down a few years ago, according to Souers. He said many of the employees are people who had worked previously for Blackwell.

Mike Salley, retail sales manager for the revived mill, said the mill began operations again last winter and opened up the retail side of the business within the past few weeks. Retail service at the mill is offered from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays, he said.