A Profit Lovely As a Tree

Dozens of industrial giants seeking new fields to conquer in the '60s have been tempted by the backward and fragmented housing industry. Most of them --including Alcoa, Union Carbide, Humble Oil, Reynolds Metals and General Electric--have found the resulting problems formidable and the profits elusive. Among others, National Gypsum, Certainteed and Sunset International Petroleum have retreated with bruises from construction ventures. But not ebullient Boise Cascade Corp., the Idaho-based paper, timber and building products maker. Having spread successfully into prefabricated homes and conventional housebuilding, the company last week moved into the land-development business as well.

In a stock swap, Boise Cascade acquired Indianapolis' U.S. Land Inc., which thrives by building artificial lakes in northern Virginia or California's Mother Lode country, then selling the land around them for residential and resort use. With the purchase, Boise Cascade became the nation's most thoroughly integrated company in the housing field.

Nobody else has put together an empire quite like it. Through subsidiary Kingsberry Homes, Boise Cascade foresees selling 5,000 prefabricated houses this year. In joint ventures with Los Angeles Builder R. A. Watt and Perma-Bilt Enterprises, a San Francisco area housebuilder, another 2,500 dwellings will go up. And Divco-Wayne Corp., which last month agreed to merge with Boise Cascade, does a $100 million-a-year business as one of the world's foremost makers of mobile homes and travel trailers. "We've been trying to get from timber--our starting point--down to the marketplace," says President Robert V. Hansberger.

Toward $700 Million. Born only ten years ago with the merger of two sleepy sawmill companies, Boise Cascade has become one of the nation's fastest-growing companies by zealous pursuit of ways to make the most of a tree. To utilize waste wood chips and sawdust, Hansberger quickly expanded into pulp and paper production. He added fine paper making by buying Columbia River Paper Co. in 1962, kraft wrapping paper by purchasing Crown Zellerbach's St. Helens paper division in 1964, newsprint and wood-fiber insulation board by picking up Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co. in 1965.

Last year Hansberger invested $88 million in half a million acres of Texas and Louisiana timberland to feed a $100 million pulp and paper mill due to start operating at De Ridder, La., in 1970. Though Boise Cascade already makes everything from envelopes to cartons, last month it strengthened its position in packaging by acquiring St. Louis' R.C. Can Co., maker of fiber foil and plastic cans for such varied items as premixed biscuits and motor oil.

All that expansion, along with overseas plants in Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Philippines and Austria, and office-supply outlets in 17 states and Canada, has enabled Boise Cascade to escape the lumber industry's traditional dependence on construction for prosperity. Its sales (now 60% derived from pulp and paper) rose from $53 million a decade ago to $489 million in 1966, should reach $700 million this year. Profits grew from $2,000,000 in 1957 to $17 million last year.

Homes in the Air. President Hansberger, 47, a graduate of the University of Minnesota and Harvard Business School ('47), keeps in touch with his 21,000 employees in 80 main plants by hopping around by Lear jet and Cessna. He spends Saturday mornings with his top command at the main office in Boise's Bank of Idaho building. Heavily recruited from the Harvard and Stanford business schools, it is a compact, youthful group. "We purposely stay thin," says Charles F. McDevitt, 35, who is one of the company's six vice presidents. "You just have to run a little faster. I'm one of the old men."

Boise Cascade executives enjoy the open country around Boise. Yet few of them own vacation retreats, even though the company sells them. "We have no second homes," admits Hansberger a bit sheepishly. "Ours are airplanes."

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