Marking five decades as one of area’s biggest employers
Past and present merged at an event to mark five decades of one of the area’s largest employers.
A‘scottish Timber Products 50-Year Reunion’dinner was held at the Dunblane Hydro Hotel on Friday evening attended by former STP personnel and invited guests including local supporting companies, some in their third generation.
The event celebrated the start of Cowie particleboard production by the company 50 years ago in 1973.
The event included a photograph screening of the Cowie factory, its management, workers and key suppliers.
Among those attending was Robin Pegna, former STP managing director from 1974-77 and Klaus Kohler who later led Caberboard and CSC Forest Products at Cowie in the 1980s & 90s. Also attending was Alan Mcmeekin, managing director of the existing Cowie plant owned by Europeannorbord (who supported the event).
Alan Bloomfield OBE, who organised the event said:“my objective was to celebrate this 50-year milestone and bring together old STP colleagues and key suppliers and supporters of the 1970s.
“Although STP was not, in itself, successful, it did leave, importantly, a crucial legacy of a particleboard factory that could, with some changes and in different circumstances, be successful. Thanks to STP, a skilled management and workforce was absorbed into a new company - Caberboard Ltd in Feb 1978 under Bison Werke, Bahre & Greten.
“From 1978 it had been a success story, developing into MDF production also. The company was purchased in 1985 by Glunz AG and now has becoming European Norbord - part of Canadian West Fraser, a major world producer of OSB.
“Those who managed and worked at STP in the 1970s should be proud of what was achieved under very difficult and different circumstances compared with today.”
European-norbord, with its head office at Cowie, has factories also at Dalcross, Inverness (OSB), South Molton, Devon (particleboard, kitchen cabinets, loft panels and flooring), and at Genk in Belgium (OSB).