Louisiana-Pacific

Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, commonly known as "LP", is an American building materials manufacturer. It was founded in 1973 and is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee. LP pioneered the U.S. production of oriented strand board (OSB) panels. Today, LP is the world's largest producer of OSB, and manufactures engineered wood building products. LP products are sold to builders and homeowners through building materials distributors and dealers and retail home centers.

As of 2011, LP has 24 mills including 15 in the United States, six in Canada, two in Chile and one in Brazil.

A leading manufacturer and marketer of building and lumber products, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) revolutionized the industry by inventing alternatives to plywood and solid wood building products. Instead of relying on larger, more expensive old-growth timber, LP found ways to make structural building products from small-diameter, fast-growing trees. LP pioneered the use of oriented strand board (OSB) — a reconstituted plywood substitute made by pressing wood wafers together. OSB is the basis for many of LP's structural building products. LP also manufacturers industrial wood products, such as hardboard and medium density fiberboard, which are used by furniture and cabinet makers. Furthermore, along with wood products such as LPI joists and laminated veneer lumber, the company also produces Cocoon cellulose insulation. Plywood and pulp manufacturing round out LP's operations. The company controls over 950,000 acres of timberland, and owns plants in 29 states, as well as in Canada and Ireland.

LP was incorporated on January 5, 1973 as part of a court-ordered monopoly breakup of Georgia-Pacific. LP was headed by company president Harry A. Merlo for the first 22 years, who was known for his flamboyant style and generous civic contributions. For its first 33 years, Louisiana-Pacific was based in Portland, Oregon; the LP headquarters were moved to Nashville in 2004.

Over the years, LP has been associated with professional sports in different manners. From 1979–82, the company owned the Portland Timbers soccer club in the defunct North American Soccer League (NASL). From 2006–15, it owned the naming rights to LP Field, the stadium which houses the Tennessee Titans and Tennessee State University football teams in Nashville.

Louisiana-Pacific was formed in July 1972 when the Georgia-Pacific Corporation spun off the wholly owned subsidiary. After Georgia-Pacific had acquired 16 small firms in the southern United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused the company of becoming a monopolist in the softwood plywood industry. As part of its settlement with the FTC, Georgia-Pacific agreed to divest 20 percent of its assets. William H. Hunt, a vice-chairman at Georgia-Pacific, was selected as Louisiana-Pacific's first chairman. In 1974 Harry A. Merlo, who had been chief executive officer of LP since its foundation, succeeded Hunt as chairman while remaining CEO.

Prior to the official spinoff of LP, Georgia-Pacific had transferred several of its operations to LP ownership, including its Samoa, Ukiah, Intermountain, Weather-Seal, and Southern divisions, as well as its 50 percent investments in Alaska's Ketchikan Pulp Company; Ketchikan Spruce Mills, Inc.; and Ketchikan International Sales Company. However, Georgia-Pacific had kept most of its low-cost timber reserves and the bulk of its tree farms for itself. Thus the newly independent LP had to 'scramble for raw materials,' particularly timber, as the July 29, 1990 Portland Oregonian explained.

This proved to be an especially difficult task as timber shortages wracked the entire industry. Overcutting, Japanese demand for logs, and pressure on the U.S. Forest Service to tighten harvesting restrictions on large trees caused prices to soar. To make matters worse, LP lost 26,000 acres of harvestable old-growth timberland with the expansion of the Redwood National Park in Northern California.

Merlo strove to shepherd the company through its early difficulties. LP acquired several lumber companies in California, Oregon, Montana, Washington, Missouri, and Alabama, and in 1976 it purchased the Fibreboard Corporation, a manufacturer of products used in making furniture and cabinets. In 1979, the company bought fifteen building-material centers in southern California from Lone Star Industries, which provided LP with much needed distribution centers.

To ensure its long-term success, however, LP would need to compensate for its comparative dearth of southern pine and Douglas fir timber, as well as lumber production. To address this shortfall, LP turned its attention to the development of wood products derived from less-expensive and faster-growing trees, such as cottonwood and aspen. As Merlo told the Portland Oregonian in 1990, 'we recognized that the days of making wood products from big trees were numbered for both economic and environmental reasons.'

In the late 1970s, the company began manufacturing OSB by slicing logs into wafers, mixing the wafers with resin, and then pressing them into sheets. First introduced under the trade name Waferwood (later re-christened Inner-Seal), this new product line revolutionized the construction industry by offering a less expensive, stronger alternative to plywood sheathing and sub-flooring. After opening its first Inner-Seal mill in 1980, LP advertised the product as 'the smart man's plywood.'