19 minute read
PERSON OF THE YEAR
WITHFRITZ GOING
By Jessica Johnson
In the year of perfect vision, Georgia-Pacific’s Fritz Mason is named Timber Processing’s Person of the Year.
Mason’s coast-to-coast perspective has made him a natural leader within his company and for the lumber industry.
Deep thinking, passionate— adjectives that might not come first to mind when describing a lumberman. Yet, after 10 minutes with Fritz Mason, the President and General Manager of Georgia-Pacific Lumber, it’s obvious they do. Mason is an industry titan, with an impressive resume spanning into five decades of experience traversing the country, producing lumber and impacting communities along the way. When looking at the Timber Processing Person of the Year roster it is only fitting that his name appears next on the list. As such, Timber Processing has named Fritz Mason as the 2020 Person of the Year. He is the 32nd annual recipient of the honor and there is no better candidate in the industry who fits the double criteria for this award of leadership within their own company and leadership within the industry at large.
A bit of a legacy lumberman, Mason’s grandfather was the manager of Sugar Creek Pine Co. in the 1940s near Etna, Calif. As a boy, growing up in a family that had long been associated with agriculture in northern California—farming, ranching, logging and sawmilling—in the Yreka area, Mason knew he wanted to work the land. “As I was getting to the point of getting out of high school I really thought I wanted to be a logger, and my mom being wiser convinced me that maybe I should consider more education before I went down that path,” Mason recalls.
Following his mother’s advice, Mason attended Humboldt State University (where he was a classmate with another industry notable, Brian Luoma, President and CEO of The Westervelt Co.) and received a degree in forestry. It was at Humboldt where he first realized the impact of the forest products industry on the country as a whole.
In its simplest terms, why does Mason like being a softwood lumberman: “I like the nexus that you’re working with a natural resource in a very sustainable way, in a process that although seems simple, a 2x4 seems simple, there’s a lot of complexity around it, it requires a lot of human interaction every day to make it work and it’s fun to work with people.” He continues, “Then you throw on the application of technology and interest in being good at that and learning all the time. If you like working with people, you like working with natural resources and you like complexity in how you apply technology to solve that—it’s a fascinating business and a business that is really fun to be in.”
Mason says he likes the people aspect first and foremost, and it shows in the way the industry embraces him as well. Humboldt classmate Luoma comments, “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this recognition. Fritz is a consummate pro and is not only a valuable asset to GP but to the entire industry. I have always admired his leadership and perspective all the way back to our college days.”
Mason’s current perspective of the industry, even with its cyclical uncertainties, is simply that there’s not a lot of good substitute product. “The alternative products that are out there to create shelter are generally expensive or not sustainable or one and the same,” he remarks. “I think you’ll see more wood products used in commercial and nonresidential construction, which is a really fascinating trend. The Softwood Lumber Board has worked a lot on that. It comes back to the application of digital technology and this explosion in innovation and knowledge transfer.” Mason is the current Treasurer of the Softwood Lumber Board.
These remarks fall in line with the
overall outlook for the future as crosslaminated timber (CLT) begins to make waves in the industry. Whether it’s CLT or other applications, Mason believes the best use of lumber will prevail—especially to complement increasingly efficient designs. And he adds that whether you believe in global warming or not, there are a significant number of positives to the carbon cycle as it relates to lumber.
One of the things that drives Mason is continuing to push innovation and automation, while making sure not to forget the critical people aspect. “Some of the automation is real simple. Like these new mills all have sweep conveyors underneath; whereas mills that were built 20 years ago, every weekend somebody has to go dig out all the junk. Digging out junk and waste is not a very fulfilling job. We’re going to see technology applications continue to make jobs more fulfilling and make the industry more fulfilling.” But to understand how Mason’s outlook was formed, it’s important to go back to the past. ➤ 16
After going through the forestry coursework at Humboldt, Mason thought for a while he wanted to go to graduate school. Thanks to a few years as a starving student, when a summer internship at the now defunct P&M Cedar Products came up, he jumped at the chance to make a little money and get some real world experience. After excelling throughout the internship, Mason was offered a full-time position from P&M Cedar, whose main business in the 1980s was making pencil stock; and there Mason began a long and prosperous career in forest products, first in a safety and process engineering role. A combination of timber supply uncertainties brought on by the spotted owl and generational succession in the family ownership in the mid-1990s made it apparent it was time for Mason to find something else, leaving P&M Cedar as business unit manager.
When he was looking around for the next opportunity, Mason crossed paths with Eric Schooler, COO at Hampton Lumber, and VP-Manufacturing Bob Schutte. From there, Mason’s entrance into southern yellow pine (SYP) began. He, his wife, Linda, and their two daughters, Sadie and Hannah, moved from the Pacific Northwest to Tuscaloosa, Ala. to work with the three mills Hampton had purchased—two in Alabama and one in Texas.
While in Alabama, he hired retired Louisiana-Pacific plant manager Julian Clements, who became his mentor in the SYP business. “Julian taught me everything from the differences in the log markets, to how you buy logs in the South, to how you dry yellow pine, to working with people. He was a neat guy,” Mason says. But shortly after moving to Alabama, as log costs rose and the SYP business got extremely competitive, Hampton decided to focus on its Northwest operations. Mason handled the sale of the three SYP mills before moving his family back to the West Coast.
He says he didn’t know when he hired Clements that Clements and Ronnie Paul, who was the Executive VP of GP’s wood products business then, were friends. But Paul soon called and asked if Mason would be interested in coming over to Georgia-Pacific and running its Northwest operations,
which at the time included mills in Fort Bragg, Calif.; and Philomath and Coos Bay, Ore. At that time GP was still a major timberland owner with about 5 million acres of timberland.
Mason made the leap to GP in 1999 and at the encouragement of GP went back to Portland State and got his MBA.
THE KOCH FACTOR
Before Koch Industries acquired GP, Mason was asked to step into the role of vice president of operations in the South, moving back to the humid climate and bringing his family to Georgia. In 2005, within a matter of months, the Koch deal would close, and Mason’s professional life would change forever. As GP moved from a public company to private ownership, people in the industry watched with bated breath. Mason says that ultimately, the change was one of the best that could have happened. “As a public company, it was hard for GP officers and the board to support investment in lumber because lumber is a deep cycle business and public companies don’t like that volatility in cash flows,” he says succinctly. Therefore, GP was very much managed with a short-term vision, not exactly ideal for a cyclical commodity industry like lumber. Koch Industries, being very closely family held and having a strong balance sheet, allowed GP the luxury of taking a very longterm view.
“It’s always about maximizing the value we can create but looking at it through the long term. Instead of worrying about what’s going to happen next quarter, we’re looking at tomorrow and the next quarter, but looking at it through a 10-15-20
Mason’s great-grandfather John. Y. Mason in front of the Sugar Creek Pine Co. around 1945. To remember his roots, this photo is the background of Fritz Mason’s laptop.
year lens. That’s a big difference.”
From 2005 to 2008, Mason was responsible for GP’s lumber operations in a really challenging environment. “At that time we had 27 relatively small, antiquated mills. The mills we had going into the recession were underinvested. We went from I think 27 operations in 2005 down to 10 or 12 in 2010.”
As the industry rebounded, so did GP with acquired production capacity and engineering and operations talent. In 2013, when the industry didn’t think GP was serious about the solid lumber business—GP acquired Temple-Inland Building Products from International Paper. That single move doubled GP’s scale of its lumber business and kicked off further investment. Since that acquisition, GP wood products has invested nearly one billion dollars—including building three new SYP sawmills in the past two years.
Under Mason’s leadership, GP has gone from 27 small SYP sawmills to, with the startup in Albany, Ga. ongoing, 17 larger mills producing one and a half times as much lumber as the 27 mills did in 2005.
The decision to add three new large sawmills to the portfolio was driven in part, Mason notes, by the unique culture the Koch Industries ownership has created at GP, which at its heart is called Market Based Management (MBM). According to Mason, MBM is a management philosophy where you look within the business and drive decisions the same way free markets work.
“And that’s a pretty stark contrast to old, hierarchical companies where a lot of decisions are driven not necessarily by what makes the most economic sense but who’s the boss,” Mason says. “Koch is really a meritocracy. It’s not who’s the boss. The boss is expected to gather the best knowledge to challenge the process, get all the people with knowledge on the subject around and discuss the problem or idea and work towards the best solution. We count on leaders to be leaders but we expect leaders to seek the best knowledge and apply that to decision making.”
Mason sees MBM as a way to really make an effort to understand what customers value, and make an effort to understand what all the other “constituents” such as log suppliers and employees value. “We put probably as much effort on these new mills really thinking through how we create a team that can run it, as we did engineering the new mills. Thinking about what’s going to create a framework that really makes
GP’s three new SYP sawmills came in quick succession.
people want to come to work for us— that’s beyond economics,” he adds.
For GP, the process does two things: It forces the company to innovate and improve faster and it creates a more fulfilling environment for the people. “Do we get it right all the time? No,” Mason admits. “Do we struggle with it at times? Yes. Our goal is to simply get better every day. Whether that’s getting better at the application of our culture or getting better at how we dry lumber, they are linked.” Mason knows this philosophy in part helps GP make decisions faster. The other piece of the process is what he calls point of view, which is what the GP leadership believes the future is going to look like and translating that into what the economics of the venture looks like. “Once we get through that step we can move very fast,” he adds.
For example, the first thoughts of converting the idled Talladega, Ala. plywood mill into a new sawmill began in 2016— looking at what’s going to happen in the industry; what’s going on in housing; where capacity is going to come from; what’s going to be the impact of the mountain pine beetle. By mid summer 2017, GP made the decision to go forward with the project. The company broke ground at the end of 2017, and the mill shipped its first lumber in October 2018. The new mill in Warrenton, Ga. was also in the back of the leadership’s mind. “We had been really analyzing what was best to do with an old mill there,” Mason says. “The original mill had been built in 1974, and we had all the background work done already because we did Talladega. Shortly after
the first of the year in ’18 we decided to go forward with Warrenton. By midsummer ’18 we decided to go forward with Albany. One of the things that’s unique for us, because of the closely held ownership with a family that’s aligned around being long-term investors, not only can we move fast, we can take on big initiatives. It’s similar to what some of the smaller operators can do but with more scale.”
BRIGHT FUTURE
Spending time with Mason makes it very clear his heart is in new projects and all that they encompass. “The fun part of the business is that you’ve got to get down to the nuts and bolts. It’s neat that you’re working with a natural resource that’s very sustainable and you’re creating shelter for society; that’s a great story. It’s a business that requires a lot of human decision making in the process. Developing
a team and getting a team to execute is very important,” Mason shares.
Of course, he finds the technology aspect of projects fascinating, but says clearly the most exciting and biggest challenge piece is developing the teams for new mills. “It’s been a lot of fun,” he says with a rare chuckle. “It is really rewarding and it has points of agony—and we’re still not declaring victory. But it’s gone well.”
But there have been difficult decisions. In the last year GP closed three mills. “It really comes down to the external environment doesn’t support longterm investment in that location,” he says somberly. “In all cases they had really good teams and it is agonizing to go through that. But, if you really look at what the fiber supply is, what the market outlook is, and what can you do—does it make sense to continue to invest in that location? Or does it make sense to reset what you’re doing and move to someplace like Albany that has future opportunity with it?”
Mason uses the closing of GP’s mill in Fort Bragg, Calif. as a good example of that thinking. Shut down in 2002, at one point the mill in the mid-1980s was the largest lumber operation in the U.S. with two large sawmills on a single site. Redwood and cedar were the only things really available for outdoor applications—and a 70% redwood mill was ideal. But in the next decade substitute products came on the market (along with environmental issues) and redwood lumber fell out of favor. “In the end take all these external factors, as much as you love Fort Bragg, Calif., can you sustain an investment there
because it doesn’t do anybody any good to invest in a losing proposition.”
Free markets are incredibly important in how society creates prosperity, Mason emphasizes. In keeping GP’s mills invested in current technologies, the company stays competitive. Mason, a board member of the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, says that is partly why you see mills being built and/or renovated in the Southern U.S. be it from U.S. companies or Canadians.
For Mason, who is not passionately territorial like some can be, the move of Canadian companies to the South was a natural progression. “The Canadians had the capability, meaning they were lumber manufacturers and they had the motivation because it couldn’t grow in their home region. It’s a natural thing.”
Contrast that to when in the 1980s the U.S. began artificially restricting its timber supply in Northwest national forests, opening the door so to speak for Canadian softwood lumber producers to ship their lumber into the U.S.—lumber that stemmed at the time from healthy provincial forests. “These are some big sovereign societal issues that drive the trade tension between the two countries and it’s not as simple as ‘I don’t like you here,’” Mason believes.
Mason says the industry’s technical revolution changed not only the way lumber is produced but brought the cost of producing lumber down significantly—from curve-sawing to advances in mill optimization and better enabling in
ers interact with end-use customers to create a more friction-less experience. “When we talk to our customers about what they want we get feedback they want a more Amazon-like experience,” he explains. But he’s quick to say customers aren’t looking for e-commerce, but instead the ability to get the products that they want when they want them on a very predictable basis. “This industry is far from that. Today our customers give us high marks for on-time shipping; and when we analyze it we’re 50 to 60% on time, but they’re giving us high marks because the industry is bad,” Mason elaborates.
Driving out inefficiencies in how the industry services customers is a big opportunity going forward and will be a source for technological advancements creating the next big wave of innovation in the industry, he believes.
PAST LEARNINGS
tegrated motion control technology that has changed the way profiling mills are built. Mason says the things to watch in the coming years are integration of digital technologies throughout the process. But even more so is how lumber producWhen asked to look back and point to a single industry innovation that changed the game, Mason says he can’t. “That’s one of the neat things about the industry,” he notes. “The innovation around process has been fairly dispersed. Whether that’s Ron McGehee and evolv
ing curve-sawing technology or some of the stuff David Seffens has done making the most reliable and robust equipment he could; what Comact and Lucidyne have done in autograding. It’s interesting because it’s a very specialized business, there’s not a lot of technology transfer between grading lumber and making other products.”
For the next decade, without a doubt, Mason says the single biggest challenge the industry will face lies in attracting and developing talent, especially to rural areas that don’t always attract or retain
talent very well. Mason says as an industry it will be critical to understand what people want and figure out a proposition that creates an environment for them.
Admittedly, Mason says GP struggled just like the rest of the industry looking for technical and leadership talent. “We always went outside of the communities we operated in and tried to bring people in, instead of looking at who are the people who want to be in this community. We shifted our recruiting from recruiting more at schools like Texas A&M to recruiting at schools like Tuskegee (Ala.) for example because we found the people at Tuskegee wanted to be in the local communities because maybe their sights weren’t set as broadly.”
GP also began looking at the local high schools, identifying those who are interested in staying. “If they are going to leave for more education, tie it back to us through an internship or a summer job, so that they recognize there’s an opportunity to stay in the community; create an environment in operator and technical jobs in the mill that has a lot of upward mobility so that we can not only attract the best people but retain them. The best thing we can do is create a path to a better work-life balance for someone where it fits where they want to live,” Mason adds.
“The days of telling people that we’d love to have you come to work for us, it’s a great job, you’re going to work variable shifts without notice and long hours and in adverse environments and you’ll get an opportunity to advance yourself when we tell you, are gone. We need to be adapting to current reality and really thinking about what motivates people.”
Mason points to “little things” like having desirable common spaces at work go a long way in helping retain employees, especially in the younger generation.
LEADERSHIP
Through it all, Mason, who is 57, has served the industry at large in numerous capacities, from coast to coast. In addition to his current participation in the Softwood Lumber Board and Binational Softwood Lumber Council, he is chairman of the Western Wood Products Assn. and is a past chairman of the Southern Forest Products Assn. and American Wood Council, to name only a few of his past and current affiliations. Mason’s broad-ranging career has provided him a perspective of the lumber industry that is unmatched. His peers, such as George Emmerson, President and CEO of Sierra Pacific Industries, are frankly amazed by it.
“Fritz has made himself a student of our industry,” Emmerson comments. “I do not know anybody that has been through as many lumber manufacturing facilities in North America as Fritz Mason. And Fritz has taken significant leadership roles in many industry associations, always representing what is in the best long-term interest of our industry in North America. I can not think of a more deserving person to be presented our industry’s prestigious Timber Processing award.” TP
