Arizona Forest Restoration Products chief says proposal to build large-scale OSB plant in Winslow, Arizona, has good chance of approval this fall

Wendy Lisney

LOS ANGELES , August 16, 2011 (Forestweb) – Pascal Berlioux, president and CEO of Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AFRP), believes AFRP's proposal to the U.S. Forest Service to build an OSB plant in Winslow, Arizona, has a good chance of being accepted, according to a report by the Tribune-News.

City manager Jim Ferguson advised Winslow City Council last Tuesday that Berlioux had called him with a progress update following the U.S. Forest Service's Request for Proposals (RFPs) in June.

AFRP plans to build a large-scale OSB plant in Winslow, which it says will support up to 600 jobs and save taxpayers at least half a billion dollars from the bill to remove wildfire fuel .

The RFP is expected to be awarded this fall for large-scale forest restoration across 300,000 acres of northern Arizona’s national forests under a 10-year stewardship contract. It will represent the first phase of the Forest Service's 20-year Four Forest Restoration Initiative to restore and manage ponderosa pine forests and mitigate the risk of wildfire.

Berlioux said that other companies are making proposals, but as AFRP's had been submitted earlier and is viewed as an excellent project, it is believed to have a good chance of being accepted.

Berlioux said he planned to speak to the council in the near future about the project, although the successful proposal is not likely to be announced before October.

Towards the end of the meeting, the council passed a resolution supporting AFRP's large scale restoration contract through the Four Forest Restoration Initiative.

The primary source of this article is the Tribune-News, Holbrook, Arizona, on Aug. 12, 2011.

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