Montana state legislators introduced legislation that it believes will help provide low-interest loans to reopen shuttered sawmills.

One such mill, Pyramid Lumber, announced in March 2024, that it will permanently close the Seeley Lake mill and auction its equipment on March 31, 2024. The mill, which provided jobs in Missoula County, Montana, for 75 years, delivered the last load of logs through the mill, which were processed in early July.

The company's board of directors voted to close the mill due to a financial crisis that has made it harder to operate, including labor shortages, rising costs, and falling lumber prices. The closure, which affected around 100 employees, was the last mill in the area. 

Now, with the presidential mandate to ramp up U.S. lumber production, efforts are being made to restart the aging facility, which officials at the time said would have to be updated to run more efficiently and with fewer employees to be profitable.

Now, a Montana state bill might help the Seely Lake mill and other mills get funding and potentially reopen. The legislation, HB 876, also known as the Sawmill Revitalization Act, sets aside $6 million for loans administered by the state Board of Investments, according to the Montana Free Press. Any money not spent by June 30, 2027, would be transferred back to the capital development long-range building account. The bill awaits Gov. Greg Gianforte’s signature.

According to the Free Press, Rep. John Fitzpatrick, R-Anaconda, and Rep. Connie Keogh, D-Missoula, proposed the bill to help “reactivate” one or more sawmills that closed in recent years. “When I came back to Montana from graduate school in the early 1970s, we had over 50 operating sawmills in Montana,” Fitzpatrick said during a Senate committee meeting on April 15. “Now we’re down to about five. In the past three years, sawmills at St. Regis and Seeley Lake have closed. And that’s not a loss just to the local economy; it’s a very detrimental effect on our forests because we have fewer places in which to process logs.”

The Seeley Lake pull out was not the only major timber-related closing announced in March 2024. Roseburg Forest Product’s Missoula particleboard plant, which was a major user of residuals created by Pyramid Mountain Lumber, also closed its doors.