Temple-Inland history

In 1934 Thomas Temple died, leaving his son Arthur with 200,000 acres of land and a company that was $2 billion dollars in debt.

In 1954 Southern Pine Lumber built a new plant in Diboll for fiberboard production, using wood waste and whole pine chips to make asphalt-coated insulation sheathing.

Time had purchased Houston Oil's 50 percent ownership in 1956, thus acquiring the 670,000 acres of timberland.

In 1963 gypsum wallboard production began with the purchase of Texas Gypsum, of Dallas, that also became a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

In 1966 the company built a stud mill at Pineland.

In 1973, Time, Inc. acquired Temple Industries, Inc., merging it with Eastex Pulp and Paper Company to form Temple-Eastex, Inc.

A wood molasses plant was built in Diboll in 1977 to use the wood sugars found in the waste water from fiber products.

In 1978 Time paid $272 million to buy Inland Container.

In 1979 Temple-Eastex moved into new corporate offices in Diboll, while the nearby plywood operation was closed permanently.

A new chip mill and log processing operation was constructed in 1982 in Pineland to supply chips to Evadale, plywood and stud logs to Pineland, and fuel for all other operations.

In 1986 Temple-Inland purchased a liner board mill, three box manufacturing plants, a short line railroad, and approximately 260,000 acres of timberland in east Texas and Louisiana at a cost of about $220 million, from Owens-Illinois, a Toledo, Ohio-based packaging company.

The company's heaviest volume, however, came from its container and container board segment, which accounted for 59 percent of the company's earnings in 1989.

Also in 1990, the company started a new sawmill in DeQuincy, Louisiana, which produced chips for the Evadale and Orange mills, as well as 100 million board feet of lumber annually.

In 1991 Arthur Temple, Jr., retired, and Clifford Grum was appointed chairman and CEO. Grum was the first chairman with no ties to the Temple family.

Temple-Inland sought to expand its paper operations, and the company acquired Rand-Whitney Packaging in 1994.

In 1996, as part of a joint venture with Caraustar, Temple-Inland purchased a wallboard facility and a gypsum quarry in Texas.

In 1997 Temple-Inland bought California Financial Holding Company, the parent company of Stockton Savings Bank F.S.B. of Stockton, California.

Temple-Inland also added new plants in 1998--two new sheet plants, located in Tennessee and Virginia, began operations.

To better serve customers in Mexico, Temple-Inland planned to open a new sheet plant in Guadalajara, Mexico, in early 2000.