Freres Engineered Wood has been an active and devoted resident of the Santiam Canyon for more than 100 years, beginning as Freres Lumber back in 1922.
In the early days, the company manufactured lumber, but they transitioned to high-quality, veneer-based products in the 1960s. Freres Wood began construction of a small-log veneer plant in 1963, which became Plant 1. Today, they manage six plants, which produce a wide range of products, including sawdust and bark chips, carbon-rich biochar, biomass energy, plywood panels, lumber, and of course their patented collection of Mass Ply products. For generations, sustainability and innovation have propelled Freres Wood, challenging the team to uncover new uses for every part of a log so nothing goes to waste.
Though they started as a humble lumber mill, Freres Wood is now one of the nation’s leading engineered wood manufacturers. Still, the Freres family and business haven’t forgotten their roots and continue to support the Santiam community in numerous ways. Freres Wood was among the first to donate to the Santiam Hospital & Clinic Foundation, following the A.J. Frank Family Foundation, each of which contributed one million dollars to help fund the hospital’s emergency room expansion project. In fact, Freres Wood has supported the Santiam Hospital since its founding back in 1953, beginning with another significant donation: the very land on which the original Santiam Hospital was built.
Beyond their contributions to the people and businesses within the Santiam Canyon, Freres Wood has impacted the economic and environmental health of Oregon as a whole. The company provides hundreds of jobs within Oregon’s forest industry, one of the state’s top economic sectors, and promotes a healthy landscape by thinning dense forests and mitigating wildfire risk. On an even broader scale, Freres Wood is reshaping the global construction industry, thanks to innovative products like Mass Ply.
The team at Freres Wood began designing their patented Mass Ply products in 2015 and officially opened their Mass Ply plant two years later. These sustainable engineered wood products are made with multiple thin layers of veneer, glued and pressed together to create wide-format panels, beams and columns, and more. Mass Ply requires less energy to produce, generates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than concrete and steel, and even retains carbon for the life of the product. Today, Mass Ply is among the most significant contributions to the mass timber industry in the world.
This year, Mass Ply received significant exposure as the building blocks for the eye-catching roof in the new PDX terminal, which opened in August 2024. The 9-acre mass timber roof features 400,000 square feet of Mass Ply Panels, with 100% of the wood sustainably and locally sourced, and 75% salvaged from Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day wildfires. The project’s cutting-edge “forest-to-frame” design is a clear illustration of Freres Wood’s commitment to Oregon’s health and prosperity.
As the Freres family looks forward to the next 100 years, they know wood will remain a vital and essential resource, not only for their company, but for the Santiam community, the state of Oregon, and even the world. They continue to lean heavily on the guiding principles of innovation and sustainability, by educating the community on responsible forest management practices, adopting more energy-efficient manufacturing processes, and of course developing new engineered wood products. Wood is Oregon’s most precious natural resource and has the innate power to affect positive change in the environment and the economy if we treat it with respect.