Northwest Dryer & Machinery Co. started in 1964. 43 years later the
company is still headquartered in Portland, Oregon area. The company grew over
its first thirty years by successfully completing over 350 Veneer Dryer
rebuilding projects for customers in the Northwest and Canada. Six new dryers
were built based on the longitudinal cross-flow design. At the same time the
company began marketing its line of Dryer Repair Parts to all of the companies
across the country making plywood.
Throughout the 1990s the market
contracted, and Northwest Dryer focused on selling its line of Repair Parts to
the plants remaining in the plywood business. The product line was expanded to
include parts for dryers outside of the mainstream US made machinery.
In the late 1990s Northwest Dryer
merged with one of the largest CNC machine shops in Portland. The combination of
the sales network and the manufacturing capacity has made the company poised for
growth as the solid wood and plywood manufacturing environment has started to
rebound.
As the new century began Northwest
Dryer bought Drying Systems Inc. and Dryer Components, and added several people
from the remaining machinery builders in the industry to staff. These new
acquisitions have expanded the company's product offering and ability to produce
the parts that all of the machinery in plywood plants use. The new product lines
include parts for Lathes,
Chargers, Patchers, and Sanders, and the conveyor systems as well as
everything on Veneer Dryers. The new Electronics experts that have joined the
company have developed new hardware and software to repair and upgrade Laser
Scanners that are used on modern Lathes, and the Northwest Dryer Laser Scanner was
introduced in June of 2004.
Northwest Dryer employs a few of the best electronic control people in the
business, they have over 50 years of experience in Start-Ups and
troubleshooting; We've also made strategic alliances with Machinery Control
companies to complete our ability to offer upgrades and complete changeovers for
Lathe and Charger systems.
The company added people to perform Dryer Evaluations and general repairs and
installations in 2003. These people are designing the first new Veneer Dryer
that the company has built in 20 years- new technologies and innovations will
make this the most efficient Veneer Dryer ever built.
These new products and services have made Northwest Dryer the most viable
supplier of Plywood Machinery in the marketplace today, from log-deck to lay-up,
from experience and expertise to nuts and bolts.
The company has grown from the two founding engineers from E.V. Prentice in 1964
to a group of professional machinery builders focused on bringing the latest
technology combined with the tradition of quality machinery to the panel
industry.
Summer of 2007 saw the addition of our
Ohio warehouse; stocked with all of the critical inventory to keep plywood and
gypsum plants running smoothly.
We also dedicated much of the shop
resources to building the important components of the large Presses used in
manufacture of Particleboard, OSB, LVL, etc. Our Press Division is made up of
some of the best engineers, production people, and field service personnel in
the business. We're installing some of the largest machine tools on the West
Coast to machine the large components of these presses- Platens, Crowns,
Columns, etc.
CNC Lathes
Some of our inventory- we stock over a million dollars of machinery parts!
Northwest Dryer & Machinery Co.
