Forty-five members of United Auto Workers Local 492 at the Stellantis Parts Distribution Center in Beaverton have joined 5,600 workers at 38 parts and distribution centers in an expanded strike against Detroit automakers.

The work stoppage began after UAW President Shawn Fain announced the strike on Facebook Live Friday. The Beaverton workers join 13,000 other workers who began strikes last week at Ford, GM and Stellantis assembly plants across the country. Fain invited President Joe Biden to join striking auto workers during the announcement, an invitation the president accepted. 

The UAW has been in negotiations with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis – a Dutch multinational automotive manufacturing corporation formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the French PSA Group — since June 2023. Workers began striking on Sept. 15 but have not seen sufficient movement to meet demands, which include wage increases and end to differential pay for temporary workers.

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Members of the Ford assembly plant in Portland are not on strike for now. Ford avoided additional strikes this week by meeting some of the union’s demands, according to Fain .

“This is an important time for our industry. As our country makes a needed transition to a green economy we have a historic opportunity to raise autoworkers standards instead of lowering them,” Local 492 President Rob Perdue said in a press release. “Unfortunately as the Big Three corporations expand into EVs they’re using it as an excuse to slash wages and undermine standards that generations of UAW workers have fought for and won. That needs to stop for all of our sake.”

“We’re planning to stay out as long as we need to win a fair contract,” Jill McCambridge, UAW Benefits Representative at the UAW Local 492, said in the release . “We’re done accepting wages that don’t keep up with the cost of living, and we’re done tolerating a two-tier system for temporary workers. The companies we work for are making record profits so it’s time to share with those of us who do the work every day.”

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Last week, Stellantis announced layoffs, which a company spokesperson attributed to the United Auto Workers strike.

A representative from Stellantis respond to request for comment with the company’s own press release, stating: “We question whether the union’s leadership has ever had an interest in reaching an agreement in a timely manner. They seem more concerned about pursuing their own political agendas than negotiating in the best interests of our employees and the sustainability of our U.S.”  

They did not address questions about layoffs at the Beaverton plant.

Eugene-based three-wheel electric vehicle manufacturer Arcimoto’s second-quarter earnings report, which was released Thursday,  shows the company earned $1.7 million while taking $13.2 million in net losses. The numbers do reflect improvement, a 17% increase in revenue and 25% decrease in net losses compared to the second quarter of 2022, when the company lost a net $17.4 million.

Leading up to the earnings call this month, the company announced plans to lease space in its Eugene factory, as well as a fundraising round of $6.7 million, and a partnership with Department of Defense contractor Matbock, which makes hybrid-electric tactical vehicles.

The company also debuted its MUV (Modern Utility Vehicle), a modular utility vehicle in the company’s lineup of small-footprint electric vehicles meant for professional and commercial use.

Shortly after the earnings call Oregon Business spoke with Arcimoto CEO Chris Dawson, who stepped into the role on April 20, replacing interim CEO Jesse Fittpaldi, who took the reins of the company after the departure of founder Mark Frohmayer last summer following a DUI arrest. Dawson is optimistic about the future of the eco-friendly vehicle manufacturer, saying it’s becoming more efficient, eliminating costs, and on track to become profitable.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you took over Arcimoto the company experienced a lot of a lot of financial difficulties, a lot of revenue loss compared to profit. What has been your general strategy for reducing costs?

You did a good job of lightly talking about the fact that Rome was burning. Like in sports, it’s focused on the fundamentals. We sat down and went through all 3,500 unique parts, quite literally part by part, and asked “Why are we spending $9 on this bolt? Why are we spending $800 on this battery?” Now we’ve made all our make-versus-buy decisions.

We’re very vertically integrated. We have a ton of capital equipment and capability that we’re not utilizing. Originally, we were planning on scaling to 50,000 units a year very quickly, so they spent a lot of money on a 250,000-square-foot building on 10 acres with tons of very nice CNC equipment, which I’m very familiar with. We’ve been leveraging that for contract manufacturing any time that we don’t need it as another revenue arm. And we’re not real estate investors, we’re a vehicle manufacturer.

We’re also scaling up to 24/7 operations. We’ve derived enough business to be able to warrant that. We have all this manufacturing potential just hanging on the vine, so we’re leveraging that. Not only will we be able to leverage and only lease the areas that we need, which is a drastic cost savings, it also pulls a fairly large amount of equity that’s going to catapult us through next year as far as runway and driving us closer to that breakeven point and then getting into operational income.

You recently partnered with defense contractor Matbock. You also have a background in defense contracting yourself. How will defense and military contracts figure into Arcimoto’s overall strategy?

I’m ex-military myself. Before I got out I was actively upgrading and fixing repairing submarines, nose to tail and get them back out to the deployment. That means integrating new technologies and new prototypes. A few years ago, I started my own engineering firm that concentrated on the development of these green technologies for military application.

As you know, as geopolitics continues to shift and our supply chains are looking less and less reliable, the military right now is very worried about where we’re sourcing a lot of our technology from, and our company is well-positioned as we have our own battery factory and build our own batteries. All the action currently in Ukraine and potentials in Asia are absolutely getting the military folks excited. They see the vulnerabilities in the supply chain and how that’s going to affect our ability to continue to operate in foreign theaters.

I see this being a very large market. Right now, we are in the prototyping phase and there are tens of thousands of [military] vehicles that could benefit from technology we’re injecting into these current prototypes. There’s an opportunity to float and grow almost solely on defense. That’s not the goal, but when we look at the potential of what our Arcimoto could supply there I have every confidence that I could shut everything down for the retail commercial side, concentrate solely on military, and build business on it.

Is the military interested in green technology right now?

If you go to the Army or Navy, Marines, Air Force, and you say, “here’s something to reduce your carbon footprint,” that’s actually not a core problem that they’re trying to solve. But if I go, “What if I gave you 300 miles of range at silent operation and another 600 miles of range with a highly efficient generator on board, so now you have an insane level of operational efficiency on the battlefield?” It doesn’t matter that it’s electric, it doesn’t matter that it’s green, it’s just a better product.

It’s very valuable to the military and they’re willing to pay for that in the fact that we’re able to move very quickly. We can simply add a shift and crank out a bunch of batteries for whatever they might need.

You also introduced your modern utility vehicle (MUV) light industrial vehicles able to be fitted for different commercial purposes. What was the impulse behind that vehicle?

That really was birthed out of our deliverator, which is basically an SUV with enclosed rear cabin in the back seat, only instead of a back seat it has shelving. When we started putting out the deliverators on various pilot projects, customers thought it was neat and sleek and looks cool, but it’s weird to work with, and if you’re loading square boxes into a non-square space, you actually don’t get to utilize the full capacity. So, in listening to customers we said “Okay, how about how about a box in the back?”  

Now it’s perfect for typical last-mile delivery, and parts leveling, and all the things that business might utilize. And then we heard “how about a flatbed on the rails, right?” So that was when said “this whole thing needs to be modular, this is just like a tractor on the farm to build an interface on that allows somebody else, and outfitter, entrepreneur farmer, whoever needs whatever kind of function, to build an implement just like tractors have multiple implements that you can integrate.

Now we’ll work designing very specific implements for specific customer requests to facilitate whatever kind of work applications that they want. The MUV is a blank canvas by which anybody can paint whatever commercial solution that they want.

What has been the reaction to them so far? Haven’t you sold any of the units yet?

Yeah, we certainly have and there’s a ton of interest. There’s a few there’s a few folks that are individually interested, in retail tech sales, which we’re certainly open to, but what we really built this for as large-scale fleet application. We’re in various conversations and various levels of deal execution on large fleet purchases of these vehicles. It’s clear we knocked it out of the park.

This is something that I would expect to see big waves from even within this quarter, if not this year, right within this year, if not this next quarter.

Its clear businesses didn’t know they had problems that could be solved by this. From some outfits that you’ve heard of, but everything from smaller mom and pop solutions to density is a big box and delivery applications for companies you’ve definitely heard of. There’s no other product that does this and it does it efficiently and doesn’t have acquisition costs without any need for upgraded infrastructure.

Is it safe to say Arcimoto’s new strategy is to diversify and look at areas where this technology like military and industrial can be used where there’s more demand?

It’s safe to say that.

Previously, Arcimoto was predominantly concentrated on direct consumer retail sales, so that’s a very niche lane which Tesla has done a great job cultivating, having spent many years there. We took a lot of arrows in the back to try to make that work. Arcimoto is not in the same position that Elon is with the relative pocket depth that he has. He was able to weather that storm long enough to make it work. We’ve got to build a lot more pragmatic business where we’ve got to leverage relationships, such as dealers and third-party service groups in order to support the product.

We’ve made 1000 vehicles, and that is great, but it’s still a small quantity of what we will build in the future. I’m not Elon and so [my perspective is] let’s build a business that makes sense.

You raised $6.7 million in capital this year.  Where’s that money going?

We’re we’re scaling up our manufacturing equipment, I should say, the availability of that manufacturing equipment, I don’t need any more of it, I just need to utilize it more often. One of use case for some of that money is to add the heads and the chefs that I need to scale my manufacturing facilities 24/7.

Another use of those funds will go into recommissioning our San Diego location, dressing it up turning it into a true-blue real dealer and with sales, service, financing, where someone actually come in and buy a vehicle like we’re all used to buying a vehicle, and then control C control V that Florida do the very same thing.

Most of our sales this year are in Florida and Southern California, and there’s enough meat on the bone in any one of those areas to take us past our break-even point. One of the most proven methods for selling vehicles is butts and seats.

Even with the progress, Arcimoto still has a sizeable revenue gap. When do you expect Arcimoto to become profitable?

Late 2024, or early 2025 we expect to hit that break-even point, which for us is 7,500 units a year. We won’t have made that by that time, but we’ll be at that run rate table, that stable foundation.

What you see with the current loss of $13 million versus the $17 million is a massive improvement.  We went through all the listed unit parts and the build-versus-buy material and said “okay, here’s the path on how we get the build material to profitability, now how much potential revenue is sitting on the shelf we’ve already lost that money?” On its face, that sounds silly to say, “Okay, let’s start manufacturing, even though we know we’re losing money on every single vehicle.” But the truth is, we’ve already lost that money. So we’re pulling the money off the shelf, we’re putting it out. That’s the reason you see that trend going from 17 to 13, and then even lower next year when we’re swapping those parts out, whether we can make them internally cheaper, or we’re finding cheaper suppliers.

The immersive tasting room will be open daily and will feature a range of experiences for visitors, including complimentary guided tastings of their distinctive nonalcoholic spirits and delicious craft cocktails for purchase. Additionally, a rotating specialty cocktail will be available, along with Wilderton Spritz happy hours each week this summer. For those wanting a more up-close look at where all the magic happens, scheduled tours of the facility are available, along with an exclusive peek into Wilderton’s research and development lab. 

“Hood River has been my home for over 25 years,” Brad Whiting told Oregon Business in a written statement. “Over that time, I have seen the town mature into a globally recognized mecca for outdoor lovers and groundbreaking beverage brands across spirits, wine and beer. The pervasive ethos around living an active, balanced lifestyle is a perfect fit for Wilderton’s team and consumers who celebrate life here to the fullest every day!” 

The new distillery is attached to the tasting room and features all distillation and production equipment, including a 1,500-gallon stainless vessel for extraction of whole, raw botanicals and a 1,000-gallon stainless vacuum pot still. The distillery will serve as a center for brand and category education, community engagement, and the exploration of nonalcoholic craft spirits. 

The Wilderton team and Christina Tello of Tello Interiors worked closely to bring the building’s design to life. The company’s love of the Pacific Northwest radiates throughout the building. Most notably, the tasting room features an impressive 40-foot-by-16-foot hand-painted botanical mural by Jess Brinkerhoff that serves as a signature anchor and pays homage to the botanicals that comprise Wilderton’s signature spirits. In its commitment to sustainability, Wilderton ensured that the building was constructed to LEED Gold standards. 

Wilderton sources its botanicals from around the world. The team draws from traditional methods of tea-making, perfumery and spirits distillation to transform raw botanicals into products that take beverage aficionados on a sensory journey. Prior to building this state-of-the-art facility, Wilderton products were crafted at partner facilities in Portland. The opening of this new location speaks to the company’s excitement for the future and its potential growth. 

“I’m excited to watch the [nonalcoholic] category evolve as it grows exponentially,” shares Seth O’Malley. “As a distiller, the categories you’re typically working within are centuries old, so it’s thrilling to be on the forefront of something entirely new. That said, we’re bringing those traditional craft sensibilities to the world of [nonalcoholic beverages], and we believe that as the category matures, consumers and bartenders will become increasingly discerning about what’s in their spirits and how/who/where they’re made.” He continues, “We’ve strived to set that craft standard from the very inception of Wilderton and believe that will be at the heart of our long-term brand value. Our distillery and tasting room are concrete examples of that commitment.” 

The tasting room and distillery are located at 407 Portway Avenue, Suite 100, in Hood River, with outdoor seating facing the Columbia River. Walk-ins are welcome for tastings, while tours of the facility will require reservations.

Oregon Business talked to three women who are staking claim in this sustainable-development industry to help bring “yes and” creative thinking to the question of how to make money off lumber — but also to widen the benefit to community, while acknowledging a commitment to the quality of life for future generations. 

Each of the women are members of a relatively new group called Women in Sustainable Endeavors (W.I.S.E.), which meets quarterly to connect, share ideas, develop collaborations and provide emotional support. 

The group was founded by Lynn Morgan, who started working at Sustainable Northwest Wood five years ago, a Southeast Portland-based lumber yard that was the first in Oregon to exclusively offer for sale sustainably harvested and reclaimed wood from local mills to construction firms and to members of the public. The business, founded in 2008 by Ryan Temple, also is committed to widening the economic, community and environmental contributions of farms, ranches and forests to clean energy, clean water and green markets in the greater Northwest. Because of Morgan’s efforts, Sustainable Northwest Wood has become a hub of emotional and collaborative support for women-owned businesses that are navigating pathways that have historically had so few women in decision-making roles. WISE started with 10 women but has grown to 35 members within the last year.

 “There’s a need and a hunger for women to gather together because it is such a male-dominated society,” Morgan tells OB. “There’s something really special about the collaboration and the connection and the support that you can get women-to-women that we have found within the group.” 

Morgan also supports the annual Sustainable Building Week conference, held during the second Monday of every October to cross-pollinate practices between engineers, architects, builders, design professionals and others who work in the realm of sustainability. The next monthly, in-person Sustainable Building networking event is June 13, 5 p.m., at the five-story PAE Living Building.

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Lynn Morgan

Sustainable Northwest Wood

Growing up in a wooded area in Eastern Kentucky, Lynn Morgan was taught to embrace sustainability as a way to avoid compromising the livelihoods of future generations. Her father was a carpenter; her schools pushed agriculture education. 

“We were raised to not waste anything, to reuse things,” Morgan says. “Even back in the ’90s, I was an avid recycler, much to my mother’s dismay seeing a big pile of recycling in the kitchen corner.” 

But Morgan says she really embraced sustainability as an ethos when she attended her first Earth Day event in college. “That inspired me in my whole career path, really, just to think about doing things in a different way,” she says. 

Now, in her job as marketing manager for Sustainable Northwest Wood, she uses storytelling to educate individuals and builders about different species of Oregon-based wood that are used for products from flooring to conference-room tables. Whether it’s an oak tree that came down in an ice storm, the blue-tinted slabs from pine trees that were killed by beetles or a sweet-smelling but invasive juniper tree — these trees can now be celebrated and remade as flooring, siding, doors and butcher blocks. 

“It’s really satisfying, the storytelling piece of it,” Morgan says. “It makes for a more meaningful piece of furniture….I don’t know of any other company that is solely dedicated to local and sustainable wood products.”

Sustainable Northwest Wood is also connected to the renovations happening at the main terminal in the Portland International Airport, which sustainably sourced at least 98% of its wood from well-managed forests in Oregon and Washington. Staff at Sustainable Northwest Wood helped connect The Port of Portland to landowners, including Indigenous tribes and small family-owned forests who had access to responsibly sourced Douglas fir lumber. The collaboration merited the Port, Sustainable Northwest Wood and Portland-based Timberlab a 2022 Leadership Award from the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit that operates in 80 countries and has certified more than 4,000 companies and 160 million acres of forestland in the United States and Canada.

Christy Covington

Tree to Table PDX

Christy Covington, a Portland native who had a 41-year career in the U.S. Forest Service, started getting interested in sustainable wood products as a passion project. Her first job at age 15 was to use axes to chop down juniper trees in Central Oregon.

“I’m truly such a tree lover that I remember thinking ‘Why do we have to cut these down?’ ” Covington says. “That’s when I first started learning about ecosystems, about the land. I was a city girl, so at a very young age, I got to be hands-on working in that field. And it changed my life. That’s when I fell in love with the outdoors, with the trees.” 

Meanwhile, her husband, Curtis Falbo, was building his arborist company, Wind Thin Tree Service, over 23 years. He eventually started salvaging the wood of the maples, black walnut, red oak, dogwood and cherry trees he was hired to cut down so that they wouldn’t be slashed into wood chips. But he didn’t have a plan for what he would do with the stockpile of wood in his Northeast Portland backyard. According to Covington, it takes each log two to three years to dry enough to be ready for sanding, shaping and texturing the slabs.

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“He was hoarding logs in our backyard,” Covington says, laughing. “I started seeing more and more of the waste that goes on with tree companies and there was no real avenue to collect, save, store, do things.” 

So she started learning more about the different species of hardwood trees, and practiced sanding and using finishing techniques on scrap wood in a corner of her husband’s backyard garage, built from wood from a church he had salvaged.

“He had a lot of tools and things, so I just started learning on my own,” she said. “I would go to my husband when I would get stuck, and he was just this great resource.”

Eventually, in early 2020, her hobby evolved into a business, Tree to Table, which designs and sells dining room tables, coffee tables, shelving, charcuterie boards and even one-of-a-kind wall art at three different consignment shops — two in Southeast Portland and one in Bend, where she first fell in love with trees as a teenager. Covington also creates and packages an organic beeswax wood conditioner from her backyard bees. And she has now hired several young people to work for her. She has a passion for encouraging people to have more wood inside their homes is to keep them connected, in some way, to the outdoors.

“Lynn [Morgan] has truly been an inspiration for me because I got myself into something very male-dominated, and it’s really great to connect with other women and that synergy and that support,” says Covington, one of the first members of WISE. “We’re pretty small-scale, but we’re learning what people love. It’s a labor of love.”

Valerie Carey

Sankofa Lumber

Valerie Carey’s parents both ran their own businesses, and she too sought ways to create her own lane. After she obtained her master’s degree in international management, she worked for a series of nonprofits and eventually landed, in 2014, at the ReBuilding Center in Northeast Portland, which repurposes building materials from deconstructed houses. 

After seven months, Carey became a manager for City of Roses Disposal & Recycling, where she did market research and cost analysis of its recycled-waste streams, such as lumber, cardboard, metals and concrete from construction sites.

“When I saw the amount of viable, usable lumber that was just being ground up and sold way up north as boiler fuel for paper mills, I lost it,” says Carey, a former construction worker and carpenter. “Very few jobs are created from that, and very little economic value captured, let alone the environment value that should have been captured.”

So she did the market studies and launched into a few years of business planning and research. She said she was shocked to discover an untapped market that could eventually lessen the need to clearcut forests in order to harvest wood that would eventually be wasted. 

“In Oregon we’re generating about a half-million ton’s worth of wood waste, primarily from construction,” Carey says. “That pencils out to — depending on the year — about 20% of what Oregon actually produces as a timber state. So when people talk about closing the loop and circular economy, we are essentially throwing away the equivalent of 15% to 20%of what we actually harvest from our forest to bring to market.”

So in 2017, Carey started her own company, Sankofa Lumber, to start to reclaim some of the 35 million tons of wood waste generated around the country by the construction industry. The Ghanaian word “sankofa” means “it is not taboo to retrieve what has been forgotten.”

Carey’s business model seemed so common sense to her that she was surprised that she couldn’t find anyone else in Oregon who thought of it first. It took her expertise and analysis of business practices to see this opportunity staring her in the face. 

“It’s such a system-level intervention point, in my mind,” Carey says. “To both deal with waste as well as keep things as local as possible, create those social benefits, create those environmental benefits, create those local economic benefits — and keep all that within our region as much as possible.” 

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In order to consistently produce the amount of lumber that builders need, Sustainable Northwest Wood agreed to invite Carey into its already established ecosystem by providing any amount or type of new wood that is not in Carey’s inventory of salvaged wood.

“This is a game-changing thing that she is trying to do,” Morgan says. “So we are distributing her products and working really closely with her to introduce her products to the design community and builders, and really helping to create a circular economy by bringing that wood waste back into the built environment.”

“That’s one of the edges that we as women have, broadly speaking,” Carey says. “We tend to be more collaborative and we tend to be big picture and find the ways that people can lean into their strengths, and still have healthy partnerships that get everyone to where they want to go.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected from an earlier draft to accurately describe Valerie Carey’s degree. The translation of the word “sankofa” has also been updated to a more detailed definition.

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President and CEO John O’Leary told reporters in January that the company had created the capacity to build 2,000 Class 8 Freightliner eCascadia battery-electric trucks in 2022. The company also had large orders from companies like UPS and Sysco, with the latter announcing in May 2022 that it had ordered up to 800 eCascadia trucks. 

“We had in our mind that the market demand was going to be X based on discussions with customers,” O’Leary told reporters in a roundtable at the Manifest supply chain conference, according to the trade publication FreightWaves. “We installed the capacity and then, all of a sudden, [it was] ‘Whoa, wait a minute. I know I told you I wanted 200 in 2023. How about if I take 25 and push the rest out?’” 

In other words, customers are pumping the brakes on electric-truck orders — but they haven’t come to a complete stop. O’Leary told the Portland Business Journal that Daimler had dispatched more than 100 trucks from its Swan Island plant by February.

So why the hesitation? The technology for electric freight trucks is here — though there are limitations on what they can be used for. And more importantly, the infrastructure isn’t quite where it needs to be for freight companies to go full-speed ahead on the trucks. 

Now the manufacturer is actively researching the latter issue in a partnership with Portland General Electric. And those working in its eMobility division are bullish on the prospects for electric trucks.

Daimler announced plans for the Freightliner eCascadia truck — a battery-operated electric version of the Cascadia trucks the company has produced since 2007 — in 2019. At that time, the company planned to begin line production of the eCascadia by 2021. It missed that mark by a year, slowed in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the company unveiled the prototype for the eCascadia in May 2022 at the ACT Expo in Long Beach and began production of the trucks late last year. 

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Daimler isn’t alone in getting into the electric-truck game. (For clarity’s sake: While the word “truck” refers to many different vehicle types, this article is about Class 8 trucks, often colloquially called semis — the large, heavy trucks used for hauling large quantities of freight.) A handful of other companies have entered the e-truck space, including established semitruck manufacturers like Volvo as well as startups like the Arizona-based Nikola Motor. And electric-car manufacturers are in the game too: California-based BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, makes Class 8 and Class 6 trucks as well as refuse trucks. And Tesla began production of a heavy-duty semi earlier this year. 

Rakesh Aneja became DTNA’s head of eMobility in 2021. He started his career at Detroit Diesel Corporation — now a subsidiary of Daimler — and spent most of this time there working to improve diesel powertrains. 

“Personally, I find purpose in sustainability,” Aneja tells Oregon Business. His work with diesel had a significant sustainability focus — it was all about pollutant reduction and fuel economy — but he describes his shift to focus on electric vehicles as a “180-degree phase change” that necessitated a move from Detroit to Portland.

“Our industry is faced with its biggest transformation ever since its inception,” Aneja says. “And what our company is going through, what our industry is going through, the journey is very similar to what I share it from my own personal story as well.” That is, in the past five to six years, Daimler as a whole has begun to shift its focus to electric mobility, setting a goal to ensure its trucks are carbon-neutral by 2039.

Daimler began working with customers in 2017 in what Aneja describes as a “co-creation” process with 40 different electric-vehicle prototypes being driven by 50 different customers, logging 1.5 million miles and offering feedback along the way.

“You know, in our diesel world, normally we will do customer demonstrations when the product goes to production,” Aneja says. “But here, given the magnitude of the change, we said we’d start much earlier in the development process, involve our customers and really learn together. So this was real-world situations, real drivers, real-world freight — and our joint opportunity to learn together, both how the vehicles are operating and, even more importantly, or at least equally importantly, what is the infrastructure required to operate these vehicles?”

That was what Aneja describes as the “generation one” phase of development. Generation two, he says, is production of the company’s first four series of electric vehicles. In addition to the eCascadia, the company began producing the MT50e commercial van for last-mile delivery in 2020 and Jouley, a Thomas Built electric school bus introduced in 2017. And in May of this year, the company unveiled a Class 6/7 electric truck called the Freightliner eM2. (Class 6/7 trucks are medium-duty commercial trucks, such as beverage trucks.)

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Both the eM2 and the eCascadia, Aneja says, are ideally suited for smaller distances where the customer is returning to a home base to charge. One reason is that they can take several hours to charge — as opposed to 15 minutes at the pump for a diesel truck.

And while charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is improving at a rapid clip, it’s still difficult to find charging stations that work well for larger vehicles like Class 8 trucks. 

People who are working to electrify the automotive industry — and observers who are bullish on electrification — freely admit there’s a dearth of chargers built to suit larger vehicles.

Ian Hostetler, commercial sales manager for the electric vehicle charging network Electrify America, notes that over the past five years, his company has built a network of 800 stations comprised of more than 3,500 individual chargers — but acknowledges those are for “light-duty vehicles.” The company has opened an Electrify Commercial division to support medium- and heavy-duty use cases. 

So in 2021, Daimler opened Electric Island, a heavy-duty electric charging site, at its Swan Island facility, in partnership with Portland General Electric. Any member of the public can charge their electric car there, but it’s meant to be a blueprint for the kind of infrastructure larger electric vehicles will need.

“We found that these [heavy-duty] sites can serve the needs of a passenger-car network as well, but not the other way around,” Aneja says. “Our engineers have tried charging Class 8 trucks in a Walmart parking lot, much to the chagrin of Walmart shoppers,” because they take up a lot of parking spaces while charging, and because they charge so slowly.

But Electric Island is primarily being used as a test site for the development of heavy-duty electric vehicles.

Ryan Menze, DTNA’s manager of charger hardware and software engineering, tells Oregon Business the ultimate goal is to develop trucks that can be charged in 30 minutes — the length of a trucker’s legally mandated meal break. 

“A driver is required to take a break for 30 minutes over the course of their driving day, so the question becomes, ‘How much charge can we give in that 30-minute window?’ If they’re stopping to unload and they’ve got 15 minutes to chart to plug in, how much range can we get in that 15 minutes?” Menze says. 

Menze is optimistic about the near-term availability of charging infrastructure, not just because of the work Daimler is doing to improve the technology but because of policy shifts that will incentivize the necessary buildouts. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, offers a 6% tax credit for electric charging stations, up to $100,000 per unit. That could be a push in the right direction for short- and medium-term shippers and warehouse sites to set up home-base charging sites for their electric fleets. 

And in March of this year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality announced it had awarded $13.3 million in grants for medium- and heavy-duty vehicle charging infrastructure. Recipients include Hood River’s Teacup Lake Nordic Club, which will install a charging site for electric snow groomers; an Albertsons warehouse in the Portland area; and a Phillips 66 in Tigard, whose charging station will be open to the public. 

The Oregon Department of Transportation has also committed $100 million to improving charging infrastructure in the state, using funds from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program, funded through the 2021 Federal Infrastructure Bill. Matt Noble, ODOT’s public affairs specialist, says the agency is “pursuing every opportunity” for more funding to build out electric infrastructure. 

The lack of charging infrastructure isn’t the only thing holding back electric trucks. Another is that they have a short range: The eM2 Class 6 has a range of 180 miles and the Class 7 has a range of 250 miles. The eCascadia has a range of 230 miles before it needs to be charged. Most of Daimler’s competitors in the e-truck space have similar range, with Volvo saying its electric trucks can go 275 without a charge and Tesla publishing estimated ranges of 300 miles or 500 to 600 miles.  

By contrast, a diesel semi can go between 1,000 and 2,000 miles on a single tank. That’s not because they’re particularly fuel-efficient — most get less than 10 miles per gallon — but because the tanks are big, holding anywhere from 120 to 300 gallons of fuel. A tank that size doesn’t fill up as quickly as the trunk of a consumer car, but it doesn’t take hours, either; it typically takes about 15 minutes.

That makes all the available electric trucks impractical for long-haul applications — typically 250 miles per day — notes Jana Jarvis, president of the Oregon Trucking Association.

That’s a point Aneja readily concedes: “We are early in our decarbonization journey, so we don’t have an offering today for long haul, but we are working on it.” His engineers — there are about 200 in the eMobility division — are “working feverishly” to extend the battery range. 

Aneja and Jarvis both expressed optimism about hydrogen-cell batteries, which could be more efficient and offer further range. 

Jarvis says she’s heard from members who have purchased electric trucks but are still waiting to install charging stations at their sites. And she notes that Oregon doesn’t have as many opportunities for medium-haul shipping as other states, notably California. She worries that policy changes — like a 2022 California regulation requiring that 100% of new cars and trucks be zero-emission vehicles by 2035, which became a template for an Oregon rule adopted a few months later — are coming ahead of the necessary infrastructure investment.

“It’s a much more complicated conversation than simply moving from diesel to electric,” Jarvis says. 

And, she says, the price tag for electric trucks is higher than for diesel vehicles: a new diesel truck costs $130,000 to $150,000, where electric trucks can cost up to $400,000, according to Jarvis. 

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Aneja did not offer specific numbers when asked about the price point but did acknowledge that the cost of the eCascadia is two to three times higher than a diesel truck. 

Menze and Aneja are both hopeful that the cost of ownership can come down — and can be mitigated by lower operating costs, especially as charger technology improves. 

“Cost of ownership definitely is a challenge, which partially is our responsibility, and we are working feverishly on that,” Aneja says. 

But while Jarvis is skeptical — and understands customers’ reluctance to go all-in on electric trucks — she says they’re a great option for several use cases, if not necessarily a panacea. 

“I will be the last person to say that our job is done, because we are only covering a small segment of the applications, right?” Aneja says. “We’re only talking regional pickup and delivery. But for those applications, these are ideal products. They’re very well designed. We have received great feedback from the customers. So at least for that segment of the applications, I feel pretty good about where we are at.”

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Ben Roche, sales director for Palm Harbor Homes in Millersburg, says he appreciated that Gov. Tina Kotek toured the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2 in January to assess the speed and effectiveness of Hacienda’s Mass Casitas modular housing pilot. He says the project was a good way of bringing attention to prefabricated homes, which have a significant part to play in solving Oregon’s housing shortage, but expressed concern that existing manufactured housing builders in Oregon have been overlooked by the state’s plan to increase Oregon’s housing supply.

“While I can appreciate the governor’s sentiment and bringing awareness to those companies, I find it odd that when one out of 10 new homes built are manufactured homes, her Housing Council completely ignored a segment of housing that’s existed in Oregon for decades,” Roche says.

Roche says three members of the Oregon Manufactured Housing Association, an industry group representing Oregon’s five manufactured housing companies, applied to be part of the governor’s Housing Production Advisory Council, which began accepting applications for membership in February. But none were selected, he says.

RELATED STORY: Governor Kotek Celebrates Speed of Mass Timber Modular Housing Pilot Project

Both modular and manufactured homes are built in factories as opposed to onsite, a process that increases speed and cost-effectiveness. The difference between the two types is that modular homes are held to the same local, state and regional building codes required for onsite homes, while manufactured homes are built to the national HUD code. This means modular homes required more skilled plumbing and electrical labor to produce, rather than owners having to comply with state housing standards after the fact.

Another distinguishing factor is the foundation. Manufactured homes with a pier and beam foundation can typically be relocated by a contractor. Manufactured homes can also be placed on a permanent foundation, crawl space, or basement. Manufactured homes can be outfitted with state-specific requirements, and Roche says many of his homes are currently in Oregon, as well as Washington, California, Idaho, Alaska, and Montana.

Oregon already has five manufactured housing shops in operation. Roche says that when it comes to meeting the governor’s ambitious housing goal of producing 36,000 new homes annually.

RELATED STORY: Industry Veteran: Oregon Poised to Become a World Leader in Manufactured Homes

“Whether it’s modular or manufactured, most production builders have an assembly line with an infrastructure. They have tooling on site CNC machines, a cabinet shop on site, you know, framing and fixtures for framing squarely walls and tables,” Roche says. “We have the ability to scale up. It’s much easier to take our facilities that build 600 homes a year and turn that into 700 or 800 homes a year than it is for a startup that’s building 10 homes a year and get them to get to 20.”

A 2022 industry review by the Manufactured Housing Institute found production of manufactured homes is on the rise across the country. In 2021, 105,775 manufactured homes were built in the United States, compared with 94,401 homes in 2020, a net increase of 12%. Roche says his industry also saw a spike in demand during COVID-19 and the Labor Day fires. The resulting increase in production is one of the reasons his industry hasn’t been as involved in the state’s housing discussion, as it left him and his colleagues with little time for outreach.

Some companies across the United States have already tried to pilot modular housing factories using mass timber. But they haven’t necessarily succeeded: Silicon Valley startup Katerra, which failed after more than $2 billion of investment.

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Jody Lyon, executive director of the Oregon Manufactured Housing Association, says manufactured homes like the ones built at Palm Harbor Homes can be delivered to a property six to eight weeks after the product is ordered, and move-in ready in approximately six months.

She told Oregon Business manufactured housing factories have the capacity to scale up to meet demand, take a sizeable bite out of the state’s housing crisis, and make good use of the state’s growing laminated and mass timber market.

“Historically, these last few years as an industry have been able to build around 2,000 to 3,000 homes a year, and we could increase that substantially. With 36,000 homes a year as a goal, we could potentially fill about 10% of that with our industry. That’s the message we’re trying to get across to Gov. Kotek, Rep. [Pam] Marsh and different legislators. We are a significant part of this solution,” says Lyon.

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Roche described Ashland Democrat Pam Marsh as a champion for manufactured housing. He said Marsh has been “instrumental” in Hope Community Corporation getting $15 million of startup capital for a manufactured housing factory in Eugene as a resource for wildfire survivors.  

“I originally thought she was interested in helping make manufactured homes more affordable and get the capacity up, as more supply will result in lower pricing and wait times for people in need of housing,” says Roche.  

Roche says regulatory barriers stand in the way of manufactured housing being able to compete with modular housing for financing. According to the Oregon Department of Revenue, manufactured homes are considered personal property, and have a title like a car or RV called a manufacturers’ certificate of origin. They are owned separate from the land they sit on. If modular homes, by contrast, are placed on a property, Roche says the home would be “practically impossible” for the owner to separate it from the park. This ability to separate assets makes financing manufactured parks less financially appealing than modular homes for a site developer.

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According to Roche, in 2022, Marsh and Roche had some conversations where she showed interest in developing private land with manufactured homes — but then she ceased communication. Now he fears manufactured housing could miss another opportunity with $200 million in housing assistance from House Bill 2001 and House Bill 5019, which passed the house on Wednesday with bipartisan support.

“I think the direction she is going [for HB 2001] is to fund modular apartments built by Intelifab in Klamath Falls, and Portland developer Tom Cody is one of the people selected to Tina Kotek’s Council for housing production,” says Roche.

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Marsh tells OB that she does not recall the specific project she spoke with Roche about, but also says manufactured homes are and will continue to be part of Oregon’s housing strategy. She says modular homes are more appealing to some developers, and while Oregon already has manufactured housing producers, the state’s modular housing industry still needs to grow.

“The takeaway here is that we aren’t prioritizing one housing type or another. We have great manufactured housing companies in Oregon already, but in terms of modular factories we have zero. We’re looking at which industry needs the boost,” says Marsh. “I have a developer in my district who wants to build [stackable] modular units but there’s no factory or builder around to accommodate the order.”

She says there is already support for manufactured housing on her legislative agenda. The first is HB 2983, which would allocate $55 million funding for the preservation and development of new manufactured home parks.  The second bill, HB 3151, limits improvements that landlord of manufactured dwelling park may require of tenant – and is scheduled for a floor reading Tuesday.

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Roche says his industry is looking for recognition that homeowners need some help with down payments on housing, and that using Oregon’s existing manufactured housing infrastructure will be a better bet on Oregon’s housing future than trying to create companies and factories from scratch.

“I sat on the housing council meeting [March 10], and I will say there are some stakeholders in there. They did talk about the needs for buildable land, expansion of the urban growth boundaries, so I’m not going to say that we are being totally ignored. But when we’re looking at spending $120 million more in one omnibus bill like HB 2001, I think you could get a much larger bang for your buck if you put that money directly in the hands of consumers and ways of developing land to be built on than actually trying to produce a factory that doesn’t exist yet,” says Roche, who adds that while manufactured housing can’t be a silver bullet to solve Oregon’s housing crisis, it can and should be more of a solution than it is currently.

“We’re trying to reach out to the policymakers and say, ‘Don’t forget about us.’ We’re still over here producing homes,” Roche says. “We’ve just been a little bit too busy to engage because we had a huge demand for homes in the last three years, but we’re ready to be part of the solution.”

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In 2014 Katie McCarron’s poodle, Rosie, started getting sick. She was 14, and like many aging, ailing pets, Rosie started getting fussy about food, rejecting nearly every food McCarron tried to feed her.

“I thought it was cancer. All the tests came back negative, but I could see her just dribbling off the court,” McCarron tells Oregon Business. “I decided to start cooking, and she started eating.”

After some experimentation, McCarron finally found a recipe Rosie would eat enthusiastically. That recipe eventually became Rosie’s Beef N’ Rice, and McCarron’s cooking project became the Portland Pet Food Company, which officially launched that year. (Rosie lived another two and a half years.)

McCarron, whose official title at the company is Top Dog — her son, then 18, came up with the initial job titles — got into the pet-food industry at just the right time. But it was a passion project, she says, not a calculated business move.

“I didn’t really plan it,” McCarron says. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, the pet-food industry is growing, let’s come up with a product.’ I really did it out of love and necessity, for Rosie and her fight. If she did this well on this product, maybe there’s a place for this in the marketplace.”

In February 2022, PPFC moved from its original site — a 3,000-square-foot kitchen and warehouse in the Southeast Industrial District — to a 15,000-square-foot site in in Portland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, but remains committed to Portland even as it becomes a national brand. PPFC products are now available at the Northwest chains New Seasons, Market of Choice and Zupan’s, as well as national retailers like REI and Whole Foods — plus the Northeast grocery chain Wegmans. PPFC products are also available at pet retailers like Mud Bay and Healthy Pets Northwest.

The company also has a multipronged e-commerce strategy, offering single orders and subscriptions through its own website; PPFC products are also available through Amazon, and its dog biscuits can be purchased through the pet-food giant Chewy. The brand has also expanded into the international market.

The product line started with Rosie’s signature dish, then expanded to include a small series of other products, most named after the staff pet who acted as the recipe tester (with the exception of Grandma Ada’s Turkey & Yams, which McCarron named in honor of her mother). The company also makes seven varieties of biscuits; some are gluten-free, some made with spent grain from local breweries and distilleries. In 2022 PPFC launched two lines of cat food, also named for its recipe testers: Luke’s Chicken N’ Pumpkin and Boots’ Salmon N’ Pumpkin.

McCarron grew up in Portland, went to Madison High School (now known as Leodis V. McDaniel High School) and Lewis and Clark, where she majored in psychology. Prior to launching PPFC, McCarron worked at Academic Network — a communication company, now owned by Stericycle — doing clinical trial research recruitment, ran a call center staffed by dietitians and nurses, and did consumer-education programs for food-pharmaceutical companies.

She attempted to retire, but that obviously did not stick.

PPFC now employs 43 people, some of whom have known and worked with McCarron for decades. A standard poodle named Winnie — “named for Winnipeg, not Winnie-the-Pooh, although Winnie-the-Pooh is from Winnipeg” — accompanies her to work (but isn’t permitted in the food-preparation area).

In 2022 the Pet Sustainability Coalition named PPFC a Top 10 Social Steward pet-food brand.

Portland Pet Food Company employees making dog biscuits.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

The company’s Brew Biscuits are so named because they’re made from spent brewery grain, some of which is sourced from Ruse Brewery, which is situated in the same building as PPFC. When I toured the facility, pallets of Bob’s Red Mill flours lined the factory entrance floor. The company also sources meat and fish locally.

McCarron notes that, unlike many manufacturers and retailers, PPFC has not faced major supply-chain issues, likely due to its commitment to local sourcing.

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“Most [pet food] is wheat and cheap grain and very little real protein. It’s nothing like what these guys are doing,” says Jerry Freemont, meat category manager of Pacific Seafood, which supplies pork, chicken and beef for PPFC’s products.

Ashley Lane, senior program manager of accreditation for the Pet Sustainability Coalition, praises PPFC’s commitment to using diverted food-waste products.

“Something that they have focused on, and that I think is kind of core to their mission, is the idea of intervening and diverting that food waste and giving it a home in the pet-food industry,” Lane says. “There is just as much safety protocol around ingredients and processes, but there is a more flexible market for those types of diverted food-waste products. They’re doing a really great job and utilizing grains from breweries and other ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste or not have been used in a way that was creating value.”

McCarron says very often pet food is not just sourced from unsavory places — “it’s a combination of farm animals, roadkill, you name it” — it’s often cooked at such high temperatures that many of the key nutrients are denatured. Those nutrients have to be added back in to make the meals full and balanced for pets.

Because McCarron insists on keeping the list of ingredients short and doesn’t add supplemental nutrients, the meals have to be marketed as a mixer, topper or supplemental meal, “because we’re not full and balanced.” But, she says, about a third of customers use the foods as a standalone meal. McCarron herself mixes Winnie’s food with kibble except when she’s traveling, in which case the dog gets a full pouch.

“It’s very expensive to make and thus it’s not affordable for everyone,” McCarron says. “However, we do explain to [customers] if they want to use it as a topper, that it will last four to five days. And just by replacing 20% of your kibble with an all-natural ingredient, you can improve the health and the coat of your dog.”

An employee packages Brew Biscuits by weight.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

A 9-ounce pouch of PPFC dog food costs $6.99, and a 2.6-ounce pouch of the company’s cat food costs $3.49 — prices that exceed not just supermarket wet foods, but many brands considered premium as well.

PPFC’s main competitors, McCarron says, are other high-end brands that either do business through e-commerce alone or started as exclusive e-commerce brands: The Farmer’s Dog and Nom Nom are both exclusively available via subscription. Just Food for Dogs, another big player in the super-premium dog-food space, started as an online-only brand but is now available at Petco. The Farmer’s Dog and Nom Nom don’t list their prices for prospective customers who are unwilling to fill out a survey about their dogs’ needs; Just Food for Dogs comes in 18-ounce pouches that cost anywhere from $7 to $10 apiece, depending on the vendor.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, about 23 million American households — one in five homes — adopted a new pet between March 2020 and May 2021. And even before the COVID-19 pandemic drove a boom in pet adoption, household spending on pets has climbed steadily upward in recent years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, household spending on pets climbed from $460 in 2013 to $770 in 2021 — an average that, The Washington Post noted in a 2022 story, would be higher if the results excluded homes without a pet.

And Americans aren’t alone. A February 2022 report from Global Industry Analysts estimated that the global market for pet care — valued at $193.5 billion in 2022 — would reach $241.1 billion by 2026.

PPFC products are now available in smaller pet specialty stores in Canada, and in 2022 expanded to Japan and South Korea — and just got permission to start shipping to China, where the GIA report says the pet-care market is likely to expand by 7% between 2022 and 2026. (Its report also points to Japan and Canada as “notable growth markets” for the pet industry.) In 2022 PPFC won the Oregon Consular Corps’ Emerging Exporter Award.

“They’re just really driven,” says Erick Garman, trade development manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Garman says he first made contact with McCarron at the Oregon State University Food Innovation Center about five years ago, and has since helped find funding to subsidize travel to other countries where PPFC is interested in doing business. “They’re not afraid to look at new opportunities. Some of their efforts have not been 100% fruitful, but they’re not afraid to try things and test.”

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McCarron tells OB that, while the company’s first retail customer was a Portland-based specialty pet retailer — Healthy Pets Northwest — pet retailers weren’t as excited about the product as she’d hoped they would be. So she started approaching high-end grocers and traveling to grocery trade shows — a strategy Garman praises.

“They’ve really sort of blazed this kind of new trail in specialty stores like your Whole Foods and your New Seasons. They certainly weren’t the first to do it, but as far as Oregon pet-food companies, they’ve done a really good job of maximizing these resources,” Garman says.

Theresa Yoshioka, the ODA’s international trade manager, has worked with PPFC on expanding into Asian markets. She also first met McCarron at the Food Innovation Center, at a new-product showcase.

“I saw her dog treats from the upcycling- ingredients brewery, and I thought, this is really an Oregon company: It’s upcycled, it names the brewery and it’s serving dogs,” Yoshioka says.

“In [Asian] markets, they care about a lot of the same things we care about,” she adds. They like buying products made from quality ingredients, and like Americans, they want to indulge their pets a little bit. “Much like us, pet population and spending on pets increased during COVID. In Japan, even though the population of dogs is set to decline, spending is up.”

“Our goal is to be not only U.S., but global,” McCarron says. “Because I feel as though all pets deserve it.”

As this issue went into production, the company was working to develop another biscuit recipe and to upgrade its mixing and packaging.

An employee packs cartons in the warehouse.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

She notes that the move was necessary in part because the company needed to expand, and she couldn’t find a large enough space in the Central Eastside, and parking was a problem.

“You know, a lot of people were like, ‘Why don’t you move outside of Portland?’ We were right down on Water [Avenue], and it was not safe at all. I worked a lot of times until 7 or 8, and it was pretty scary going out of there. But I feel like I’m pretty street smart,” McCarron says. “I was like, ‘It’s fine. I’m from Portland. I’m not going to be chased out of Portland, so we stuck it out. I said, No, we’re Portland Pet Food. We’re going to stay in Portland.’

“I loved it over there, despite all the trouble we were having, the break-ins and everything else,” McCarron says of the Central Eastside location. “It’d be a lot less expensive to be outside of Portland. But I grew up here, and hopefully we’re going to bring the city back sooner than later.”

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Tofurky, the Hood River-based maker of alternative meat products, announced last week that it and its parent company Turtle Island Foods has been acquired by Morinaga Nutritional Foods, a subsidiary of Japanese food and beverage company Morinaga Milk Industry. Tofurky’s sister brand, the plant-based cheese product Moocho, was also acquired in the deal.

“We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved thus far as an independent and family-operated company, but as we enter our next stage of growth, Morinaga will provide the platform needed to help us expand more aggressively in the U.S. and beyond,” Tofurky CEO Jaime Athos said in a press release about the deal.

According to the press release, Tofurky will continue to manufacture at its Hood River facility. 

Turtle Island Foods CEO Jaime Athos. Photo: Jason E. Kaplan

“We’re excited to help bolster both Tofurky and Moocho’s presence in the U.S. while strengthening manufacturing efficiencies and boosting new product development to meet ever-increasing marketplace demand,” Morinaga Nutritional Foods’ CEO, Hiroyuki Imanishi said in the statement.

The two companies already have an established working history. Morinaga has been a tofu supplier to Tofurky for 17 years. According to the release Morinaga plans to increase the number of technical staff and production capacity at Tofurky’s Hood River manufacturing facility.

Morinaga is a private company and is not required to disclose how much it paid for the acquisition. According to disclosure documents, Tofurky’s net sales were approximately $42.4 million in the fiscal year ending in December 2021.

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Morinaga also operates a tofu manufacturing facility in Tualatin and a sales and research and development office in Torrance, Calif. In its release, Morinaga said it “plans to leverage synergies” from Tofurky’s sales teams to fine-tune total portfolio approaches to the U.S. marketplace.”

Tofurky was founded by Athos’s stepfather Seth Tibbot, who started Tofurky’s parent company Turtle Island Foods in a treehouse in 1980. The company gained popularity from its production of Tofurky, a savory plant-based loaf, which is still popular at Thanksgiving.

The acquisition comes as the company continues to ramp up production to meet demand. Vegan and vegetarian eating trends continues to see rapid growth across global markets: according to the Bloomberg Intelligence Report, plant-based food sales are expected to increase fivefold by 2030.. In 2016, the company expanded its operation by building an additional 44,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. In 2019, the company debuted its Moocho line of dairy-free cheese, cheesecake, cream-cheese products.

RELATED STORY: Brand Energizer

The purchase also follows a trend toward consolidation in the food industry. In 2021, global food company Danone acquired Earth Island, the company that produces vegan mayonnaise brand Follow Your Heart. The acquisition was part of Danone’s global strategy to increase global plant-based sales to $6 billion by 2025. In August 2022, KraftHeinz announced it would sell its powdered cheese business to the global food corporation Kerry.

Tofurky has led the legal charge against legislation attempting to regulate sales language surrounding plant-based foods.

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Last year, the company won a legal victory in Arkansas, after it joined the Good Food Institute, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the state over a law that prohibited plant-based protein companies from using words like  “burger,” “chorizo” and “hot dog” on their packaging. The judge in that case sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that the law was unconstitutional.

The company is also serving as lead plaintiff in similar lawsuits related to the labeling of plant-based product labeling in Oklahoma, Missouri and Louisiana.

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 Coming from a tech startup, Greg Howes was shocked by the inefficiencies he saw in the construction market when he entered the mass timber industry 15 years ago.

“When you think about appliances or furniture, almost any product really, you can see the effectiveness of building the product in a factory before shipping it to the consumer. We see this efficiency basically everywhere except in the housing market,” says Howes.

“The way the industry literally works is that you have a design from an architect printed from a PDF and builder who then has to figure out what to order and who to hire. Behind all the glossy marketing, it’s a really inefficient industry,” he says. “Just ask someone who’s had their kitchen remodeled.”

Howes began producing manufactured homes in Portland in 2010 when he founded CutMyTimber, which fabricates timber and steel components for the entire building industry, with the help of his Swiss-born business partner, Stefan Schneider.

The Sidyard, a 20,000 square foot residential building in Portalnd, contructed with gulan beams and columns from CutMyTimber.   Credit: Stephen Miller

Up to now, Howes’ company has done mostly higher-end custom projects. But this summer he will be leaving his small Portland warehouse and opening a five-acre 14,000-square-foot factory in Eagle Creek to keep up with rising demand for manufactured homes. Howes says the new building will triple its production capacity, and keep up with rising demand for what he describes as a more modern, more efficient housing alternative.

In the world of manufactured housing, terminology can get muddled. “Modular,” “manufactured,” “volumetric,” and “kit-of-parts” hall refer to homes — or home add-ons like garages and accessory dwelling units — partially or fully assembled before being shipped to the location. Already a sizeable share of the housing market in Europe and Asia, manufactured homes are more cost-effective, produces less waste and carbon emissions, and can be built months faster.

RELATED STORY: Governor Kotek Celebrates Speed of Mass Timber Modular Housing Pilot Project

Gov. Tina Kotek has championed manufactured housing for its ability to create homes quickly to ease homelessness and add to the middle housing market, and for its use of mass timber — a term that refers to wood products manufactured from the strands, particles or veneers of wood bonded together.

Some companies across the United States have already tried to pilot modular housing factories using mass timber, some with more success than others. Howes says that some of the large-investment failures, like the Silicon Valley startup Katerra, are sensationalized without telling the larger tale of factory built homes as a growing industry.

According to a 2022 industry review by the Manufactured Housing Institute, manufactured homes are on the rise across the country. In 2021, 105,775 manufactured homes were built in the United States, compared with 94,401 homes in 2020, a net increase of 12%.

A West Vancouver net-zero home, with mass timber and cross-laminated timber designed by CutMyTimber. Credit: CutMyTimber 

Costs associated with traditional construction are also rising, while productivity in the conventional construction market stagnates.

Howes says most of the demand is on the West Coast, and Oregon’s growing mass timber industry makes it a perfect place for the manufactured housing industry to grow. Mass timber tends to be a perfect fit for manufactured homes because of its ability to be cut and glued to size.

“In Oregon we load those boats with ungodly amounts of logs, they go to China, and they made into lumber and get shipped back,” Howes says. “Right now that’s best way I can make money as a private owner of forestry, but I think we should add the value and create those jobs here.”

Oregon Forest Science Complex, home of the TallWood Design Institute. Credit: CutMyTimber. 

As Howes sees it, the big question is how quickly the manufactured housing cluster will develop, and whether local ordinances and market hesitation will get in the way.

“Oregon is the biggest producer of softwood lumber in the country. We have all the wood so we are inevitably going to become the leaders,” says Howes. “It’s just a question of how quickly that is going to happen. It’s my hope we’re going to become the world leader.”

Judith Sheine, director of design the TallWood Design Institute, says she is hopeful mass timber modular housing will become a reality in Oregon in a few years, but adds the industry faces headwinds.

She says it will take time before mass timber modular construction are able to compete on cost with conventional onsite construction, or “stick builds.” For all manufactured housing’s benefits and efficiencies, Sheine says, the industry is still very much fitted for onsite construction. That means few builders, architects and real estate developers have the experience to take on a modular housing project. Businesses looking to produce manufactured homes also face the upfront cost of building a factory.

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Sheine also says manufactured homes also face regulatory hurdles, which the Mass Timber Coalition-funded TallWood Design Institute is working to address. The organization received a $41.1 million grant last September to develop and expand Oregon’s mass timber industry. Sheine says part of that process is making the housing landscape more welcoming for manufactured homes.

“One of the obstacles to its widespread adoption in Oregon are some local zoning codes prohibiting manufactured or modular housing on sites. As part of the EDA grant, the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development is working to revise those codes to allow modular housing in more locations,” Sheine tells Oregon Business over email.

A collaboration between the University of Oregon and Oregon State and member of the Mass Timber Coalition, the TallWood Design Institute promotes the use of mass timber in housing. She says the first step in building out Oregon’s modular housing sector is to build large scale factories able to produce competitively priced housing, like the Port of Portland is planning for its Terminal 2 facility.

RELATED STORY: Modular Moment

Howes says government projects promoting manufactured housing are “hugely important” to putting factory-built homes on the public radar, but that the fate of the industry in Oregon will rely on its ability to generate an industry cluster.

“I would say the biggest thing holding back the industry right now is fear of doing things differently.” says Howes. “So, what you have is a more efficient way to do things that the majority industry has no experience with yet.”

Howes spends his time actively in manufactured housing industry groups, and says he wants the modular housing industry to grow by sharing, innovating and collaborating – the best way to capitalize on a manufactured housing market where demand outstrips supply, mass timber is being subsidized, and the cost of stick builds continues to climb and face supply chain issues.

“I hope it functions like the video game industry,” Howes says. “When you have so many creative people doing so many great designs you only learn and get better. I’m happy to give anyone a look at how we do things.”

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Standing among the hollow wooden housing units in the Port of Portland’s Marine Terminal 2, Gov. Tina Kotek and Sen. Jeff Merkley declared the Mass Casitas $5 million modular housing prototype pilot project a success.

Funded through a state grant and headed by housing nonprofit Hacienda CDC, Mass Casitas — the six boxcar-sized housing prototypes — will be shipped out and installed for families in Portland, Talent, Lincoln City and other Oregon cities in June of this year.

Modular housing units, sometimes called “prefabs” have been floated as a possible solution to help ease Oregon’s housing crisis. Assembling housing units en mass from mass timber allows for the units to be built more quickly by a team indoors, and shipped across the state as needed.

Mass Casitas prefab projects in the Port of Portland’s Marine Terminal 2. Credit Sander Gusinow

Hacienda received the funding for the modular housing project in December of 2021, and began construction on the six housing on Dec. 16, 2022. If the six housing projects meet their deadlines, it would be a one- to two-month improvement on typical home building time and efficiency.

According to the 2019 Survey of Construction from the United States Census Bureau, the average time spent to construct a single home is 8.1 months, which often includes over a month of authorization to start and another seven months to finish the construction.

The project also uses mass timber composite, human-made construction boards made from wood fibers and adhesives. In September of last year, the Oregon Mass Timber Coalitionreceived a $41.4 million EDA grant to develop and expand Oregon’s emerging mass timber industry. The grant was intended as a way to address the state’s housing and wildfire problems, and create good-paying jobs.

Mass Casitas prefab projects in the Port of Portland’s Marine Terminal 2. Credit Sander Gusino

Keith Leavitt, the chief trade and equitable development officer for the Port of Portland, said the housing units would fulfill their mission of disrupting Oregon’s housing market.

Speaking at the debuting event, Kotek said the modular housing units “put another viable option on the table for housing.”

She told Oregon Business the prototypes are significant because of the speed at which they can be produced, and their ability to use mass timber. She said Oregon’s $5 million investment in the prototypes has been worth it, as the state will need produce housing quickly, as well as at cost-effectively.

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“This project is using Oregon mass timber, which is number one. It’s the efficiency and effectiveness at which the units can be produced quickly, and the ability to produce them indoors means you can produce them year-round,” says Kotek. “This is what we need here. It’s not going to solve the entire problem, but this is a critical piece to add additional types of homes on the market.”

Oregon currently has a 110,000 housing unit shortfall, according to state economist Josh Lehner. Lehner estimates Oregon needs to add 13,000 new housing units per year to keep up with rising housing demand.

Hacienda CEO Ernesto Fonseca says the focus now is on monitoring the prototypes and being able to secure a factor space with more investment. With proper scaling and once the production process is more streamlined, he estimates the cost of the construction could be lowered between 15 and 30%.

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“We’re going to utilize these prototypes to demonstrate that this can indeed be done a very short period of time. The next phase is to work on the financing of a potential factory facility. We will continue to modify some of the designs so that some of them can be used for the unhoused population. We also want to start working on producing stackable units,” says Fonseca.

Fonseca adds that as Oregon’s mass timber industry expands and the supply chain fills, modular housing units like the kind developed by Mass Casitas will become more attractive to builders.

“Obviously, it’s all about economics,” Fonesca says. “Mass timber is a relatively new product that is not mass-produced. Once those supply chains start to get filled, that’s going to reduce the cost. For us, this is about showing this work can in fact be done.”

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