Customers

Quite a number of large industries have located to the L & N W between Gibsland and McNeil over the years.  In Magnolia, AR, customer Partee Flooring Mill is the last Parquet (hardwood) flooring manufacturing company to still be served by rail.  JM-Eagle manufactures PVC pipe, plastic culverts, and other plastic tubing products, while All-Star Recycling, located at the old CSR Pipe Mfg. location, is a metal recycling operation. 

          South of Magnolia, Commercial Metals Company, Inc. receives steel billets and scrap rail which are heated and extruded into different products:  t-bars, t-posts (fencing), bed frames, and rebar (concrete reinforcement) just to name a few.

          Albemarle Corporation, located on US Hwy 79 south of Magnolia, is one of the largest employers in Columbia County, employing some 650 people operating around the clock, seven days a week.  Bromine, the key ingredient in most of the products produced here, is obtained from a saltwater brine field located deep underground in this part of southern Arkansas.  Bromine is used primarily to make chemical intermediates, key building blocks used by other manufacturers to make final consumer products. 

          Among the approximately 30 products produced here are flame retardants used in household plastics, fabric fibers and insulation materials, completion fluids to make oil wells more productive, foam insulation, and chemicals used in photography and medicines.  Other products of Albemarle are found in everyday products such as plastics used in televisions, personal computers and electronic products, bathroom disinfectants, personal-care products such as soaps and shampoos, yard and garden pest-control products, and carpeting.

          The piney hills between Emerson, AR and the Louisiana state line is the location of Weyerhaeuser’s Veneer Technologies plywood mill.  Here, logs harvested locally are cut into sheets of veneer, and manufactured into plywood.  The importance of the lumber industry in our area is well documented and easily observed.

Kinder Morgan Inc. is a nationally recognized in the frac sand business. Recently, they located a transloading operation on the LNW. Currently they are shipping out of Athens, LA, but have made future plans to move their operations to Gibsland, LA and to be one of the first customers to utilize the LNW’s new Iron Bridge Road site.

Top Dollar is a scrap company located in Homer, LA. Top Dollar transloads scrap metal into railcars, and ships to destinations across the US.

Clarke Veneer and Plywood has developed a partnership with Weyerhaeuser Co. in Emerson, AR. They now ship veneer and plywood by rail to various destinations throughout Mexico.

Berry Plastics and Industrial Packaging, both located in Homer, LA, laminate paper and pulp board products with a plastic coating.  Tactical Cleaning Company, experts in the cleaning of rail cars, recently began operations in Homer.