Pittsburgh-based Koppers Utility and Industrial Products Inc., a subsidiary of Koppers Holdings, announced Wednesday it had purchased property in Glendale, Ore., to continue its expansion efforts.
The 70-acre former sawmill property will allow the treated wood and wood products company to expand its business by optimizing Koppers Performance Chemicals’ distribution network and expanding its wood-treating capabilities on the West Coast.
“Our West Coast Performance Chemicals business has grown to the point where adding production and distribution capabilities makes sense to lower our costs and improve our margins,” Koppers President and CEO Leroy Ball said. “Longer-term, this property also has the potential to expand our industrial treating footprint into a geographic market that we do not yet serve. This example again demonstrates our ongoing focus on network optimization, a key strategic pillar of our value creation business model, and represents the next step on our path toward reaching our long-term profitability goal.”
Koppers is headquartered in Pittsburgh and provides products and services to the railroad, specialty chemical, utility, residential lumber, agricultural, aluminum, steel, rubber, and construction industries. With customers all over the globe, the company’s global manufacturing and distribution network utilizes facilities in North American, South America, Australia, and Europe.
The company was started in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s by German engineer Heinrich Koppers, who created a new coke-oven furnace that recovered byproducts for other uses rather than releasing them into the atmosphere. Now the company employs more than 2,100 people worldwide.