A business takeover can be a scary thing, especially when the company is based in another country, but the Bangor railway tie operation where that happened three years ago has kept right on track, with large-scale investments modernizing the operation.

Back in 2005, when Stella-Jones Inc. of Canada purchased the pressure-treated wood railway tie production portion of Webster Industries of Bangor, the plant was producing between 600,000 and 700,000 railroad ties per year. Since the change in ownership, that number has more than doubled to 1.5 million a year.

And, if recent purchases and a 2.5 million-dollar expansion are any indication, production should continue to increase.

According to plant manager, Doug Fox that is all according to plan. “We are trying to consolidate and update the business,” Fox said. “We’re computerizing and modernizing the industry and doing lots of automation and upgrading of equipment.”

Division manager Dave Whitted came to work at the plant 16 years ago from Houston, Texas, and like most of the 50 or so Webster employees, was apprehensive about his future when Stella-Jones bought the plant. “It was a scary week when we got bought out, but things are probably better now than ever,” Whitted said. “They (Stella-Jones) are willing to invest. The upgrades in the plant have been phenomenal — I’ve spent more money in the last two years than I did in the 10 years before that.”

He points to a machine lifting and stacking railroad ties. “That material handler cost us $250,000 — we could have never afforded that before.”

Whitted also mentions three new forklifts that cost about $170,000 in total. “Some of the guys were driving forklifts made in the 70s,” he said. “To step into a 2008 machine was like getting into a Mercedes.”

Perhaps the most important recent acquisition was a $300,000, 126-foot long cylinder used to pressure-treat railroad ties that came from North Carolina “The shipping charges alone were $50,000,” Whitted said.

The addition of the cylinder and $2.5 million in other renovations have increased the Bangor plant’s capacity by 60 percent. Three cylinders now operate around the clock, while the rest of the plant gets by on two shifts. There are about 60 employees, almost all of them holdovers from when Webster owned the business. “We’ve got a lot of 25-year employees,” Whitted said.

The demand for what the Bangor plant produces should stay strong. “About 21 million ties need to be replaced every year — and that does not even include new construction,” said Fox.

“We think the market is strong and should sustain itself for the foreseeable future,” said Whitted. As if to emphasize his point, in April Stella-Jones announced the acquisition of the Burke-Parsons-Bowlby Corporation, a producer of wood-treated products for the railroad industry.

It was the largest acquisition in Stella-Jones history as it added five plants in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. The company now owns eight facilities in Canada and seven in the United States.

“This strategic acquisition will establish Stella-Jones as the second largest player in the North American railway tie market,” said Brian McManus, President and Chief Executive officer of Stella Jones. “The transaction is in keeping with our stated objective of purchasing businesses only in our core market categories and will be immediately accretive to earnings.”

Asked what attracted Stella-Jones to the Bangor plant, Fox had this to say: “We look for smaller operations, often family-run, that have trouble keeping up with all the environmental standards. We ask if the site is clean, and if the business is well run. The sites we’ve picked just need a little upgrading and investment.”

Proof of that investment is easily visible to anyone who drives by the plant just east of Bangor. Piles and piles of railroad ties stacked 25 feet high seem to stretch to the northern horizon of the 120-acre facility. “We’ve got 1.2 million ties in the yard. That’s approximately $21 million in inventory,” Whitted said.

“We draw wood from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois,” Fox said. “A lot of sawmills were struggling before. Now we’ve provided them with an outlet to survive. We’ve also been a real boon to local truckers.”

“It isn’t unusual in the summer for us to have 50 to 60 trucks per day load up with railroad ties,” Whitted said.

Upon arrival at Bangor the ties are weighed and inspected for splits, rot and knots. About 70 percent are oak, but there are also ties made of maple, hickory, gum (from southern states like Missouri) and pine.

After inspection, the ties are stacked and left to dry for six to nine months. Keeping track of which pile has reached which stage of moisture content is an organizational challenge. “Based on experience, we know that, if a certain kind of tie comes to us in March, it will be dry enough to process in November. Therefore, we can make sales months ahead of time,” Whitted said.

Once the ties do enter a cylinder and are pressure-treated with creosote they do not sit around taking up valuable yard space. They are loaded onto railcars or trucks almost immediately. “We try to get them out of the yard as soon as possible,” Fox said.