Using local resources to thrive

Next year, Lovell’s Georgia-Pacific gypsum plant will be celebrating 60 years of operation at the location. The plant was originally being built in 1966 as The Gypsum Products of America, before G-P took over, and the corporation still considers the site to be beneficial and thriving.

Most larger corporations acquire facilities and assume operations of existing businesses. The fact that Georgia-Pacific helped complete this plant and that it has maintained growth and success is something they are very proud to claim.

Koch Industries purchased G-P in 2007, transitioning the company from a publicly held to a privately held company.

“This means we don’t have stockholders and don’t have to do a lot of the filings and stuff that public companies do,” Georgia-Pacific’s director of public affairs and communications Rick Kimble said. “It is one of the most amazing places to work just from that aspect, in my opinion, and Koch has been very good.

“Our mills are kind of like jumbo jets. You could be flying on a 30-year-old plane, and airlines keep them up to date. And so do we with our plants. We modernize as we go and incorporate new technology as it is developed into our locations.”

Lovell is not the only gypsum plant owned by Georgia-Pacific, but this location holds a valuable and unique quality that most of the others do not possess: an on-site mine.

“The fact that Lovell has a mine right by the facility is incredibly valuable,” Kimble said. “Those other plants that produce the same products must have the materials shipped in from somewhere else. The ability to mine right next door is such an asset.”

The miners are vital to the whole process at the plant. 

“Those guys do a lot of the important work, and if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to keep running,” Kimble said. “They essentially feed the beast, and they do a good job of it.”

The gypsum mined on site is the key ingredient to the wallboard the plant produces. There are different veins of gypsum, some being better than others depending on impurities. The impurities must either be removed or the mine focuses on veins that have the higher quality.

“These miners are experts at what they do,” Kimble added. “They know how to figure out how to get the most out of it.”

Georgia-Pacific works in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management and adheres to very strict rules regarding the use of public land and the standards it must be returned to after use.

When they mine the gypsum, it comes out in chunks of various sizes, and the gypsum is transported to the plant to go through a series of grinding processes to get down to a powdery consistency.

It is then mixed with some water and chemicals to form a slurry that then goes in between two layers of paper or fiberglass to create the wallboard. From there, the wallboard is shipped by trucks and by railroad directly from the plant all over the country.

The mine extracts roughly 480,000 tons of gypsum yearly.

“We do a lot of capital investments and improvements here,” plant manager Larry Connors said. “We are installing some new technology that will make things safer to our employees. Safety concerns are huge.”

Kimble then added, “If something can be automated, we don’t do those things to eliminate positions, but we do it to eliminate people having to be in high-risk injury areas. Every company wants to think they’re safe, but it is something that Georgia-Pacific really embraces.”

Human resources manager Jackie Cheatham reported that the Lovell plant has approximately 118 employees.

“We only have about a 22% turnover rate, which is pretty good considering other gypsum plants within our company are right around 30-40%,” she said.

She also mentioned that they have about 10 individuals with anywhere from 15 to 42 years of employment at their site and have worked multiple positions throughout the facility. The company encourages employees to continue their education and offers financial grade incentives to do so.

As plant manager, Connors said his goal is to make the plant a great place to work for its employees and feel valued by the company.

“I want my employees driving to work with smiles on their faces,” he said. “We want people to want to work here and be proud that they do. We’ve done a lot of work around community engagement and try to be good partners with the community members.”

“When I ask new hires, ‘Why do you want to come work for G-P?’ about 90% of them tell me it’s because they have heard that it is a good place to work,” Connors said. “That makes me really proud that we’re providing that type of work environment for people.”